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Romans
and Other
_ New Testament Essays

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ON ROMANS
ON ROMANS
and Other
New Testament Essays

CU EIB GRANELELD)
Emeritus Professor of Theology
University of Durham

G.M. ELLIOTT LIBRARY

~incinnat!i Christian University

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To Ruth, Mary and Elisabeth
 Contents

PREFACE 1X

1 ‘THE WorKS OF THE LAW’ IN THE EPISTLE

TO THE ROMANS

2 A Norte oN Romans 5.20-21 5

3 Romans 6.1—14 REVISITED

4 SANCTIFICATION AS FREEDOM: PAUL’S TEACHING

ON SANCTIFICATION Bi)
With special reference to the Epistle to the Romans

5 SOME COMMENTS ON ProressorJ.D. G. DUNN’s

CHRISTOLOGY IN THE MAKING Lyle
With special reference to the evidence of the
Epistle to the Romans

6 PREACHING ON ROMANS 69

7 ONTHE I]totic XQLOTOU QUESTION 81

8 GrtviING A Doc A BAD NAME

A note on H. Raisdnen’s Paul and the Law 99

Q Has THE OLD TESTAMENT LAW A PLACE IN THE

CHRISTIAN LIFE? 109
A response to Professor Westerholm
a6
Wuo Are Curist’s BROTHERS (MATTHEW 25.40)? Zz
Vil
On ROMANS

11 ‘THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST E37

12 Some REFLECTIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF THE

VIRGIN BIRTH 151

13. A RESPONSE TO PROFESSOR RICHARD B. Hays’

THE MORAL VISION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 167

LisT OF THE AUTHOR’S PUBLICATIONS 177

INDEX OF CHIEF PASSAGES DISCUSSED 189

INDEX OF NAMES 191

Vill
 Preface

For permission to include in this collection of essays material

which has already been published elsewhere grateful acknowledge-
ment is made to the editors and publishers of the following journals:
The Expository Times, Irish Biblical Studies, Journal for the Study of
the New Testament, Metanoia, Reformed Review, Scottish Journal
of Theology; and to Professor L. D. Hurst, The Very Reverend Dr
N. T. Wright and the Oxford University Press.
My indebtedness to my wife for her constant help and unfailing
patience and for much more besides and to my two daughters for
the encouragement which they are to me is greater than I can
express.
Durham, December 1997 C.E.B.C.
seers gan
 ]

“The Works of the Law’ in the

Epistle to the Romans

The particular concern of this essay* is ProfessorJ.D. G. Dunn’s

understanding of Paul’s use of the phrase €gya vouov in
Romans, as expounded in his commentary! and in several other
recent works.’ It is an understanding which is to a large extent
determinative of his view of the Epistle as a whole, and it is an
understanding to which he has apparently come, at least in part,
under the stimulation of Professor E. P. Sanders’ work, although
in his understanding of the phrase he actually disagrees with him.
It is Professor Dunn’s contention that Paul has been mis-
understood by successive generations of commentators. By ‘the
works of the law’, which he describes as ‘a key phrase whose
importance for understanding Paul’s thought in this letter can
hardly be overestimated’,’ Paul did not mean obedience to the law
generally, but specifically, he thinks, adherence to those practices
prescribed by the law which most obviously distinguished Jews
from their Gentile neighbours, in particular circumcision, keeping
the sabbath and observance of the food laws; and, when Paul
declared that no flesh will be justified before God by the works of

* First published in Journal for the Study of the New Testament 43 (1991), pp.
89-101.

' Romans (Word Biblical Commentary), 2 volumes, Dallas, 1988.

2 E.g. ‘The New Perspective on Paul’ (Manson Memorial Lecture, 1982), in
BIRL 65.2 (1983), pp. 95-122; ‘Works of the Law and the Curse of the Law
(Galatians 3.10—14)’, in NTS 31 (1985), pp. 523-42.
. > Romans, p. 158.
On ROMANS

the law, he did not mean that no one will be justified on the ground
of his having obeyed the law since fallen men and women come
nowhere near such true obedience, but was polemicizing against
his Jewish contemporaries’ complacent reliance on their privileged
status as God’s covenant people and their exclusiveness towards
the Gentiles.*
I feel obliged to question this view; but, in so doing I wish to
acknowledge that Professor Dunn has put all students of Romans
greatly in his debt by giving them so rich an abundance of detailed
and suggestive exegesis, including many fresh and stimulating
insights. Even where we are not convinced by him, he does us
the very valuable service of forcing us to re-examine the text
strenuously and to re-think matters we have tended to take for
granted and of helping us to look at key points in the Epistle from
new angles. It is a commentary with which we shall have to reckon
and from which we shall be learning for a long time to come.
Some facts about word-use may be noted at this point. The
phrase €QYa VOUOV occurs twice in Romans (three times in the
Textus Receptus: it has it in 9.32), six times in Galatians, and
nowhere else in the New Testament. In addition, the singular
TO EQYOV TOU VOUOV occurs once in Romans. Both égyov and
VOUOG are common words in the New Testament. According to
the frequency table in Kurt Aland’s Vollstandige Konkordanz zum
griechischen Neuen Testament,’ €QyOV is the twenty-sixth most
common noun in the Greek New Testament, occurring 169 times,
sixty-eight in the Pauline corpus and fifteen in Romans; and vouoc
is the nineteenth most common noun, occurring 195 times, 121 in
the Pauline corpus and seventy-four in Romans.
Since six out of the eight occurrences of €eya vOuov in the
New Testament are to be found in chapters 2 and 3 of Galatians
and since Galatians was written before Romans, no one who is
concerned with Paul’s use of the phrase in Romans can afford
simply to ignore the evidence of Galatians. So, before we turn to
our special task, we must look briefly at €aya vOuov in Galatians.

* Romans, pp. 153-5, 158-9.

* Band II, Berlin and New York, 1978, p. 407.
 “THE WORKS OF THE LAW’ IN ROMANS

In his 1982 Manson Memorial Lecture, ‘The New Perspective

on Paul’, Professor Dunn concentrated on Galatians 2.16 (in the
English Revised Version: ‘yet knowing that a man is not justified
by the works of the law, save through faith in Jesus Christ, even we
believed on Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in
Christ, and not by the works of the law: because by the works of
the law shall no flesh be justified’). Dunn argued that the context
justifies the inference that by ‘the works of the law’ here Paul meant
such things as circumcision and the observance of the food laws,
and these things as characteristically and distinctively Jewish.® He
maintains that they were understood neither by Paul’s Jewish
interlocutors nor by Paul himself
as works which earn God’s favour, as merit-amassing observances.
They are rather seen as badges: they are simply what membership of
the covenant people involves, what mark out the Jews as God’s people
... In other words, Paul has in view precisely what Sanders calls
‘covenantal nomism’. And what he denies is .. . that God’s grace
extends only to those who wear the badge of the covenant .. . The
phrase ‘works of the law’ in Gal. 2.16 is, in fact, a fairly restricted
one: it refers precisely to these same identity markers described above
. . those regulations prescribed by the law which any good Jew would
simply take for granted to describe what a good Jew did.’

A similar explanation of the other three occurrences of €oya

vouov in Galatians (in 3.2, 5 and 10) is given in his New Testament
Studies article, ‘Works of the Law and the Curse of the Law (Gal.
3.10-14)’.8
I think it should be admitted that as far as Galatians is
concerned, Dunn’s explanation of €gya vouwov does have a
certain plausibility. The fact that the occasion of the letter
was Paul’s having received news of the activities of people who
were insisting on the need for Gentiles who had accepted the
gospel to be circumcised; the prominence of references to circum-
cision (TEQLTEUVELV occurs six times, WEQLTOWN seven times,

6 ‘Nlew Perspective’, p. 107.

7 ‘New Perspective’, pp. 110-1 1.
8 ‘Works of the Law’, pp. 532-5.
On ROMANS

&uooPvotia three times); the presence of expressions like 6

Tovdaiouds in 1.13, 14, at mateixat pov magaddoets in 1.14,
ueta TOV ~OVOV ovvEeoiew in 2.12, EOvixdo xal ovyi
Iovdaixadc Civ and tovdatetw in 2.14; perhaps even the
occurrence of €QYQ VOWOU six times in the space of sixteen
verses itself — these things might seem to be some support for
understanding €9ya voOuov in Galatians in Dunn’s ‘restricted’
sense.
But none of them, nor yet any of the other points which, to my
knowledge, have been urged in favour of the restricted sense,
would seem to be decisive, and, in the absence of any clear indi-
cation that €eya vouov has a special restricted sense, the balance
of probability must, I think, be on the side of taking it in what is
surely the natural sense of the phrase as a Greek phrase. Moreover,
on the assumption that it is used in the sense of ‘(doing) the works
which the law requires’, ‘obedience to the law’, an exegesis of all
the verses in which it occurs, which does justice to their context
and to the rest of the letter, is possible. By contrast, Dunn’s
exegesis in the latter part of his New Testament Studies article,
which strikes one as unconscionably tortuous, reaches a climax in
its attribution to Paul of a narrow view of what Christ accomplished
by his death (e.g. ‘The curse which was removed therefore by
Christ’s death was the curse which had previously prevented that
blessing [i.e. the covenant blessing] from reaching the Gentiles,
the curse of a wrong understanding of the law” and ‘In his earliest
extant teaching on the death of Jesus he asserts that the whole point
of Jesus’ death on the cross was to remove the boundary of the law
and its consequent curse, to liberate the blessing promised to
Abraham for all to enjoy’),'° which surely sorts extremely ill with
the sense of deep personal indebtedness expressed in 2.20 (‘. . . the
faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself
up for me’).
While some features of Galatians do lend to Dunn’s explanation
of €9ya VOuoV a certain plausibility as far as its occurrences in

* ‘Works of the Law’, p. 536.

© “Works of the Law’, p. 539.
 “THE WoRKS OF THE LAW’ IN ROMANS

that epistle are concerned, it is very much more probable that in

Galatians the phrase has its natural general sense. The facts that
both €gyov and vOuos are very common words in the New
Testament (as we saw above) and that the combination of ova
with vOuog in the genitive is a very natural formation seem to
make it extremely unlikely that Paul would use €gya vouov in a
special restricted sense without giving a clear indication that he
was doing so. Dunn’s idea that the phrase (in the restricted
sense he gives it) was ‘either already familiar to his [i.e. Paul’s]
readers or self-evident to them in its significance’" is, in my view,
quite unconvincing.’? But, even if Dunn’s explanation of €oya
vouov in Galatians were accepted, the meaning of the phrase
in Romans would not have been settled. Paul could scarcely
assume that the Christians in Rome would be familiar with what
he had written to the Galatians. That Paul was capable of using the
same expression in different senses on different occasions is clear
enough.
We turn now at last to Romans. The first occurrence of €oya
vouov is in 3.20: drdt. EE EoyWV vOuOV Ov SixatwONoETaL
madoa odes évMmiov avtov, dia yae vouov emliyvaotc
Guaetiac. Dunn explains €eya vouou here as meaning quite
specifically those observances like circumcision and keeping of the
food laws ‘which marked the Jews off from the other nations as
distinctively God’s people’."*
But there are several compelling reasons why this explanation
must be rejected.
1. It fails to take account of the fact that 3.20 stands in relation
to the whole argument from 1.18 on. When Dunn says of 3.20,
‘The concluding summary of the first main stage of the argument
must refer back to what Paul had been attacking for the last chapter
and a half, particularly Jewish pride in the law, and especially in
circumcision as the most fundamental distinctive marker of the

N ‘Works of the Law’, p. 527.

12 The passages in the Qumran texts, to which he appeals in ‘Works of the
Law’, p. 528; Romans, p. 154, do not seem to me to offer very clear support.
'5 Romans, p. 155.
On ROMANS

people of the law’,!* he has lost sight of Paul’s argument. He should

have referred back not just one and a half chapters, but right back
to 1.18 where this section begins. Paul’s concern from 1.18 on has
surely been to lead up to the conclusion expressed in 3.20a and
then restated in the opening lines of the next section in 3.23 (RV:
‘For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God’), namely,
that all human beings are sinners (Jesus Christ alone excepted)
whose only possibility of being righteous before God is by God’s
free gift accepted in faith; and his concern in 2.1—3.19 is not
primarily to polemicize against Jews (Dunn speaks of ‘Paul’s
polemic here’),!> but rather to draw out the full meaning of 1.18—
32 by demonstrating that there are no exceptions to its sweeping
judgment — even the Jews who might not without reason think of
themselves as superior to the pagan world around are no exception.
2. It is surely ruled out by the presence of the latter part of
3.20. The force of yao at the beginning of 61a yae vouov
ETLYVWOLG GAUAOTLAS is ignored by Dunn, though he correctly
translates it by ‘for’. It indicates that this sentence is added as
support for what has just been said. But, while a statement that the
effect of the law is actually to show up human sin does indeed
support what has been said in the first part of the verse, if in that
first part ‘the works of the law’ means obedience to the law
generally, it is difficult to see how it is support for it, if ‘the works
of the law’ has Dunn’s ‘restricted sense’, and his explanation would
involve supposing an awkward change in the way the law is being
thought of between the two parts of the verse.
3. It involves taking the plural eyo vouov in a quite different
sense from that of the singular To Egyov TOD Vouov in 2.15. While
this is not impossible (for Paul, we know, can use the same word in
different senses), it is surely preferable, if possible, to take it in the
same or a Closely related sense, unless the context forbids this. I
understand to €eyov tov vVOuoV in 2.15 as ‘the work which the
law requires’, and take Paul’s meaning here to be that the
eschatological promise of Jeremiah 31.33 that God would write his

'* Romans, p. 154.

'S Romans, p. 154.
 “THE WORKS OF THE Law’ IN ROMANS

law in the hearts of his people is being fulfilled in the Gentiles who
have believed in Christ. The use of the singular ‘may be explained
as intended to bring out the essential unity of the law’s
requirements, the fact that the plurality of commandments
is no confused and confusing conglomeration but a recognizable
and intelligible whole’'® (cf. the use oftO Stxatmpua in 8.4 and the
replacement of ‘the works of God’ in John 6.28 by ‘the work of
God’ in the following verse). It seems to me that 2.15 tells in favour
of taking €9ya VOuOV in 3.20 in the general sense rather than in
Dunn’s restricted sense. The difference then between ‘work’ in
2.15 and ‘work’ in 3.20 will simply be that in the former place it
denotes the work as prescribed, in the latter the work as actually
done. And if the Gentiles referred to are taken to be pagan Gentiles,
it is equally impossible to give to ‘the work of the law’ anything like
Dunn’s restricted sense.
4. Dunn’s explanation is further called in question by the
occurrence in Romans of such expressions as Ot WOLNTAL VOUOD in
2.13; ta tov vOuoV motetiv in 2.14; vouov mEcooELV in 2.25; Ta
SLXALHPLATA TOD VOUOV PvAdoCELV in 2.26; TOV VoUOV TEAEtv
in 2.27; dovAevetw vouw BEd in 7.25; TO Stxatwya tot vouwov
TANHEOVYV in 8.4; and vOuov TANEOUV in 13.8. All these are, it
seems to me, naturally connected with the phrase €9ya vouov. In |
none of the occurrences of these expressions in Romans is it at all
feasible to see a reference to circumcision, etc. (Dunn’s proposed
restricted sense of €oya VOuoV): in 2.25 circumcision is explicitly
contrasted with practising the law.
5. It is also called in question by what we find when we look
at the occurrences in Romans of €gyov and vouos in separation.
In seven out of the twelve occurrences of €@YOV without VOUWOU, it
clearly does not refer to such things as circumcision (the other
five we shall consider below). With regard to vOuoc, it would
surely be difficult for even the most ardent champion of ‘the new
look on Romans’, after a survey of the more than seventy
occurrences of vOuwoc in the Epistle, to deny that, when Paul uses

16 C_ E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the

- Romans 1, Edinburgh, °1987, p. 158.
On ROMANS

the word vouoc, it is the law in its fundamental theological and

ethical character which he normally has in mind, not the law as
providing an obvious national identity-marker distinguishing Jews
from Gentiles.
6. Possibly we should see a sixth reason for rejecting Dunn’s
explanation in the fact that in 14.1-15.13, a section which may
perhaps reflect Paul’s knowledge of actual problems confronting
the Roman Christians, it is to ‘the strong’ and not to ‘the weak’
that the main thrust of Paul’s exhortation is directed. Would one
not expect it to be otherwise, if Dunn’s view were right? If Paul
really was as much preoccupied with polemic against Jewish
reliance on circumcision and the observance of the food-laws and
the sabbath as Dunn seems to think, is it likely that he would have
weighted his exhortation in this section in the way he has? (I
assume that ‘the weak’ are Christians, mostly Jewish, whose faith
has not yet given them the freedom enjoyed by ‘the strong’ and
who still feel obliged, as believers in Christ, to observe the
ceremonial law.)
In view of what has been said above, the conclusion seems to
me inevitable that Dunn’s interpretation of 3.20 must be rejected.
The meaning of 3.20 is surely, as others have long recognized, that
justification before God on the ground of one’s obedience to the
law is not a possibility for fallen human beings, since none of them
is righteous and the effect of the law is to show up their sin as sin
and themselves as sinners.
We turn next to the other occurrence in Romans of €eya
vouon in 3.28 (AoyiCoue8a. yao Suxaovobat miotEt dvVOEWTOV
XMQLS EQYWV vOuOV). Dunn understands it as in 3.20, and he
heads the section 3.27-31, ‘The Consequences for the Self-
Understanding of the Jewish People’. Though this may fit in
well with his view of Paul’s argument so far, it seems to me to be
a quite unjustified limiting of Paul’s concern. How could Paul,
immediately after vv. 21-26, verses which repeat the conclusion
of the whole argument from 1.18 to 3.20 by the statement that
all have sinned and lack the glory of God, and proclaim solemnly
and directly the redemption in Christ Jesus and God’s costly
forgiveness, go on merely to draw out the consequences for the

8
 “THE WorRKS OF THE Law’ IN ROMANS

self-understanding of the Jewish people? At this particular point

anything less than a drawing-out of the consequences for the self-
understanding of human beings as such would surely be an
intolerable anticlimax. It is not just Jewish boasting which is here
excluded (pace a good many commentators), but all human boasting
before God. That €gya vOuov must have the same sense here as
it has in 3.20 can hardly be denied. If any human beings at all are
justified, it must be without their having obeyed the law, since
all are sinners who lack the glory of God. (Verses 29 and 30 [RV ‘Or
is God the God of Jews only? is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yea,
of Gentiles also: if so be that God is one, and he shall justify the
circumcision by faith, and the uncircumcision through faith’],
referring as they do to the distinction between Jews and Gentiles,
might at first sight seem to be support for Dunn’s view that this
section is intended as polemic against Jewish pride in such identity-
markers as circumcision. But I take it that the function of those two
verses is to support v. 28 by indicating that to deny its truth and to
claim that men actually earn justification by their obedience to the
law would be to imply something obviously false, namely, that God
is not the God of all men but only of the Jews. God’s ultimate
impartiality is shown by the fact that he will justify Jew and Gentile
alike by or through faith, that is, by undeserved grace.)
We must now turn our attention to several places in which
€Qya occurs without vOuov but apparently with a similar sense
to that of €9ya vouov. The first two of these are in Romans 4.
With reference to 4.2 (ci yao "ABeadu €& geywv edixawwen,
éyer xavynua, GAM od mec BEdv), Dunn insists that €& Eoywv
‘should not be taken as a more generalized statement than €&
éoywv vouou, as the parallel with 3.20 and the similar usage in
3.27—-28 clearly indicate’,’’ and that “The recurrence of the key
themes, “works” and “boasting”, indicates clearly that Paul once
again is thinking of the typical national confidence of his own
people as to their election by God and privileged position under
the law’.'® With reference to 4.6 (xaBameg xai Aavid héyet TOV

" Romans, p. 200.

18 Romans, p. 227.
On ROMANS

UAKAOLOLOV TOD AVOQEMMOV @ 6 BEdc AoyiTetat SixaL_ooUVTV

xywois éoywv), he claims that what is meant by €gya. is ‘the sort of
nomistic service in which the devout Jew could boast’.’? But, in
reply it must be said that:
(i) ‘him that justifieth the ungodly’ in v. 5 strongly suggests
that Abraham’s lack of works is thought of as having a
moral content;
(ii) the quotation of Psalm 32 in vv. 7 and 8 supports taking
‘works’ in a general, rather than in Dunn’s ‘restricted’,
sense, since it identifies being justified apart from works
with having sins forgiven;
(iii) vv. 14 and 15 would seem also to weigh against taking €gya
in Dunn’s narrow sense, since the point of those verses
seems to be that the possibility of justification through the
law is not open, since all are sinners incapable of fulfilling
its requirements; and
(iv) the position of chapter 4 in the ongoing argument of
Romans requires that €gya here should be taken in the
general sense, if what we have said 1n connection with 3.20
and 28 was correct.
The next occurrence of €Q@ya to be considered is in 9.11—12
(unm yao yevvnSevtmv unde moaedavtmv tt ayabov j
Pavrov, tva i xav’ ExAOYIV TEdVEOts Tot HEod Levy, Ox &E
EQYWV GAN Ex ToD xahodvtoc, EEEE0H adTH Sti 6 peiGwv
doviAevoet tH EAGooovt). Again Dunn insists on taking Zoya. in
his restricted sense. He says, for example, ‘In particular Paul is
concerned to demonstrate that his fellow Jews should not attempt
to understand Israel’s election in terms of law keeping. Israel’s
selection took place before his birth and therefore neither depends
on, nor can be characterized by such distinctive Jewish “works of
the law” as circumcision and observance of food laws, sabbath, and
feast days.”? But in that case, why did Paul write ‘neither having
done anything good or bad’, which would seem to imply that the
‘works’ referred to must have a moral content?
'° Romans, p. 206.
0 Romans, p. 549.

10
 “THE WorKS OF THE Law’ IN ROMANS

The fourth of these occurrences of 9yo is in 9.32, in which

Paul gives as the reason why Israel, which was pursuing the law of:
righteousness, has not attained to it, the fact that they pursued it
not on the basis of faith but as on the basis of works (ovx &x
MiOTEWS GAN ws EE EQywv). Dunn rejects the view that Paul
means by pursuit of the law wo && EQywv the illusory attempt
to come to terms with it on the basis of one’s deserving, the cherish-
ing of the notion that one can so adequately fulfil its demands as to
put God in one’s debt. Rather, it was understanding ‘the law
defining righteousness . . . too narrowly in terms of the require-
ments of the law which mark off Jew from Gentile’.?! And some
pages later he says: ‘Israel’s mistake was not that they had under-
stood righteousness as obedience to the law... . , but that they had
understood obedience to the law too much in terms of specific
acts of obedience like circumcision, sabbath observance, and
ritual purity . . . they had treated the law and the righteousness it
requires at too superficial and too nationalistic a level. . .’.”
Congruously with this understanding of 9.32, he takes tHv LOtav
[Suxatoovvyv] in 10.3 to mean ‘their own [righteousness]’, not as
attained by their own efforts but as peculiar to them to the exclu-
sion of the Gentiles.* But, with God’s righteousness mentioned
twice in the verse, it is surely putting too great a strain on credulity
to suggest that a contrast between God’s righteousness and their
own was not intended; and, if that was intended, it is hard to
resist the conclusion that the contrast is between the status of
righteousness before God which is God’s gift and a status earned
for themselves. It seems to us that 10.3 is strong support for the
view of we €& Eoywv in 9.32, which Dunn rejects.
The last of the occurrences of €eya to be considered is in 11.6.
Paul has just said that at the present time there is a remnant
according to the election of grace, and he continues: el 6& YAQUTL,
ovxneétt &E £oyov, EMEi N YAQLG OVXETL YiveTaL YoU. Once more
Dunn is very confident of the rightness of his interpretation. ‘ee

21 Romans, p. 582.
22 Romans, p. 593.
23 Romans, p. 587.

1]
On ROMANS

éoywv is, of course, short for €& €Qywv vouou ... The point is
polemical ... [The “works” are] “works” understood as the
hallmark of election, as that which marks out the elect as such. . .
the New Jerusalem Bible’s rendering of €gya as “good actions”
perpetuates the classic misunderstanding that Paul is objecting toa
belief that justification can be earned by good works ...’.“* And
again a few pages later he underlines the identification of the works
referred to with ‘the national customs and ritual acts which defined
their identity as God’s holy people, both ethnically and religiously
(circumcision, sabbath, food laws, etc.)’.> But has not Dunn lost
sight of Paul’s actual argument here? In 11.2b—10 Paul is concerned
to make the point that not all of Israel is unbelieving. As in Elijah’s
time there were the mysterious seven thousand who had not
bowed their knees to Baal, so now too there is a remnant — the
Jewish Christians. And, as it was in Elijah’s day, so now also it is by
God’s election of grace that a remnant exists. And, if it is by grace
that a remnant consisting of the Jewish Christians exists, then it is
not on the ground of their €gya. But Paul’s purpose in the whole
section 11.1—36 is to support the theme stated in 11.2a (God has
not cast off his people which he foreknew) and to suggest strongly
that there is hope for those who at present are unbelieving. The
fact that there are some Jewish Christians now is a sign of hope
with regard to the still unbelieving Jews. In this context then a
statement that the present remnant’s existence stems from God’s
grace and not from the remnant’s works in the sense of their
having obeyed the law makes good sense, as it suggests there is
hope for still unbelieving Israel which also lacks works in this
sense; but a statement that the remnant’s existence stems from
God’s grace and not from its works in the sense of loyalty to
circumcision, food laws, etc. does not in this context make such
good sense, since unbelieving Israel has such works in abundance.
In this context one would expect €9ya to denote something which
both the members of the remnant and also unbelieving Israel alike
lack.

** Romans, p. 639.
*° Romans, p. 647.

12
 “THE WORKS OF THE LAW’ IN ROMANS

The foregoing exegetical discussion has shown, I think, that

Professor Dunn’s explanation of €@ya VOuoV in Romans (and also
of €gya alone where it seems to be equivalent to oya VOuov) as
referring specifically to those practices which function as identity-
markers, distinguishing Jews from their Gentile neighbours, in
particular, circumcision, observance of the sabbath and observance
of food laws, must be rejected; and that even in Galatians, where at
first sight it might seem to possess a certain plausibility, his
explanation of €9ya vOuov should be rejected.
I do not dispute his often-repeated description of the attitude
of the typical Jew of Paul’s time. I regard it as highly likely that
Paul’s Jewish contemporaries were indeed liable to be specially
preoccupied with those practices of the law which most obviously
expressed and safeguarded Israel’s distinctiveness, to be com-
placently reliant on their nation’s privileged position as God’s
chosen people, and to cherish a proud exclusiveness towards those
beyond its boundaries. I accept too that Paul, committed as he was
to the Gentile mission, must have disapproved of such an attitude.
But I am certainly not convinced that Paul was as preoccupied with
polemic against this Jewish attitude as Professor Dunn makes out.
His view seems to me to do less than justice both to the all-
important christological dimension of Paul’s criticism of his Jewish
contemporaries (see, for example, Rom. 9.32b—33) and also to the
clarity and steadiness of his vision of the situation of human beings
as such in the light of the gospel. In so far as it actually reduces
Paul’s argument to polemic against a misunderstanding probably
not shared by the majority of those he was addressing (not to
mention Christians of today), would it perhaps be fair to say
that its effect is a weakening of the impact of the Epistle — a
blunting of its cutting edge, a giving the impression that it is less
pointedly relevant to human life than it really is?
To conclude, I submit that the explanation of €9ya vOuov in
Romans rejected by Professor Dunn is the true explanation,
namely, that it denotes (the doing of) the works which the law
requires, obedience to the law; and that, when Paul says that no
human being will be justified in God’s sight by works of the law,
_he means that no one will earn a status of righteousness before

1
On ROMANS

God by obedience to the law, because such true obedience is not

forthcoming from fallen human beings. The statement that God
saved Christians ‘not by works done in righteousness, which we did
ourselves, but according to his mercy’ and the description of their
destiny as ‘being justified by his grace’ are (whoever actually
composed Tit. 3.4ff) true to Paul’s mind and provide a helpful
commentary on Paul’s use of €9ya VOuoU in Romans. It should,
of course, go without saying that Paul a/so believed that there is a
sense in which the righteous requirement of the law is being fulfilled
in the believer (Rom. 8.4), that there is something which may be
called ‘fulfilment of the law’, which is no full or perfect obedience
and in no way establishes a claim on God, but is simply that humble
faith in God’s grace, penitence for one’s deep sinfulness, past and
continuing, and a beginning of being at least turned in the direction
of obedience to God, which the Holy Spirit works in the believer.

14
 2

A Note on Romans 5.20—21

That Romans 5.20-1 is a difficult passage has long been recog-

nized. It forms the conclusion of the paragraph 5.12—21, the main
feature of which is the comparison between Christ and Adam.
From ancient times there has been wide agreement that in v. 12
Paul, having started on his comparison, breaks off (v. 12b being
not the expected apodosis but a continuation of the protasis),! in
order first to justify his use of the verb Guaotdvetv in v. 12b,
which in view of 3.20b and 4.15b might seem problematic, and
secondly to make it absolutely clear, before his comparison has been
completed (though the last five words of v. 14 are a strong hint of
what it is going to be), that in every particular except for the one
point of comparison the two persons compared are altogether
dissimilar. Then in v. 18 he at last states the comparison, v. 18a
repeating the substance of v. 12 ina different and highly condensed
form and vy. 18b giving the long-expected completion. Verse 19
then supports and elucidates v. 18. Verses 20—21 bring the para-
graph to a close by referring to the part played by the law, a subject
already touched on in wv. 13-14.
1. The first matter to be considered is TagetofAGev. It has
often been assumed that it must carry a more or less depreciatory
sense. Thus, for example, Sanday and Headlam paraphrase:
“Then Law came in, as a sort of “afterthought”, a secondary and
subordinate stage, in the Divine plan’,’ and Barrett translates:

' Though this has been challenged by C. K. Barrett and others, and in the
2nd edition of his commentary (The Epistle to the Romans, London, 1991, pp.
101, 103—4) he still maintains his interpretation.
2A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Edinburgh,
5th ed., 1902, pp. 139 and 143.

15
On ROMANS

‘The law took its subordinate place.” It is certainly true that in

Galatians 2.4, its only other occurrence in the New Testament,
MOAQELOEEXEOVAL does seem to have a somewhat disparaging sense
— something like ‘insinuate oneself in’ or ‘intrude’. But Otfried
Hofius in his very careful and detailed study of Romans 5.12—21*
has come out decisively in favour of taking the word here in a
neutral sense, ‘noch ausserdem hinzukommen’.’ He argues that,
while magetoeexeo8at does sometimes denote a coming in
privily, a getting in unnoticed, a getting in by deceit, it is also used
in a neutral sense of coming in, entering in addition, coming in
besides. He cites a convincing number of clear instances of this
neutral use.
But, before we accept his conclusion, it is interesting to look
at other Greek words compounded with mageto — LSJ lists
more than twenty-five — to see whether such a survey confirms
Hofius’ judgment with regard to magevofAOev. Four of these
words occur in the New Testament: wagetocyetv in 2 Peter 2.1;
MAEELGAXTOS in Galatians 2.4; TaQgELodU(v)w in Jude 4; and
MAQELO*PEGELV in 2 Peter 1.5. In the first three of these passages
the word in question probably does carry some sense of secrecy
(the RV has ‘shall privily bring in’, ‘privily brought in’, and ‘crept
in privily’, respectively); but in the last of these passages
MAQELOMEeQEtV is clearly quite neutral (omoOVdSHV maoOav
TOAQELOEVEYXAVTES EMLYOONYNHOATE EV Ti] MOTEL DUM TH
Geetryv). In the LXX there is only one occurrence of a TAQELO-
compound. It is in 2 Maccabees 8.1, where, though the entering
in referred to is certainly secret, the fact that AeAnOOtoc is used
with TAQELOTMOEEVOUEVOL suggests that the verb is understood to
mean simply ‘make one’s way into’. I think it is fair to say that,
while a few of the maQet0—compounds are intrinsically negative in
meaning (e.g. TAQELOYEAN, in which the addition of TaQa-to
elOYOAM? = ‘registration’ gives the sense ‘illegal registration’;

3 Op. cit., pp. 102, 109-10.

* ‘Die Adam-Christus-Antithese und das Gesetz: Erwagungen zu Rom 5,12—
21’, inJ.D. G. Dunn (ed.), Paul and the Mosaic Law, Tiibingen, 1996, pp. 165—
206.
> Op. cit., p. 200.

16
 A NoTE ON Romans 5.20-21

MAQELOTEACOELY, in which the addition of TAQa-to ciomOGOOELV

= ‘exact’ gives the sense ‘exact beyond what is legal’; and
TMAQELOPOEeigecOat, where the simple verb already has a negative
meaning), the majority are in themselves quite neutral. Thus,
for example, TAaQELOGYeEtV can be used equally well of introducing
the children of those who have died in war into the assembly
(Isocrates 8.82), of proposing someone as a candidate (Plutarch,
Galba 21), or of traitors treacherously introducing soldiers into
a city so as to enable them to take possession of it (Diodorus
Siculus, 12.41.4). In Josephus, B7 2.169, tagevoxouiCetv is used
of Pilate’s introducing into Jerusalem the effigies of Caesar by
night and under cover, but it is the identity of what is introduced,
the fact that it is concealed and the fact that the action takes
place by night, which make this particular magevoxoutCetv
sinister; the verb itself is quite neutral. The situation with regard
to MaQgeLtodu(v)@ (often in middle voice) meaning ‘slip in’,
‘penetrate’ is similar: it can be used of soldiers infiltrating a city
(Herodian 2.12), but also of rubbed in oil penetrating into a body
(Aristotle, Problemata 88177) or of water penetrating into a body
(ibid., 933716), while the cognate TaQetodvoOtsc is used ofa slipping
in, a way to get in, an opening. My clear impression is that the
evidence of the other 7a@Q€LtG-compounds confirms the conclusion
reached by Hofius with regard to magevoeeyxeoOat, and I think
we can be confident that Paul’s use of magQetofrjAOev in Romans
5.20 is in itself in no way a disparagement of the law.
But Hofius, while firmly rejecting the view that aQetonAGev
is disparaging, holds that 5.20a sets the law on the Adam-side, not
the Christ-side, of the Christ-Adam contrast.° Though it does
seem probable that, in stating that vOuoc . . . TaQELOTAOEV, Paul
had in mind his earlier statement in v. 12 that 7) Guagtia eis TOV
XOOLOV cioT}AOEV xa Sid Tig GAUaetias 6 Pdvatos, and that
by magevonAOev he meant ‘came in [i.e. into the world] besides
[i.e. after and in addition to sin and death]’, I cannot — for reasons
which will presently become clear — accept that this passage places
the law on the Adam-side.

Op cit p. 20.

17
On ROMANS

2. We must next look at tva. John Chrysostom understood it

as ecbatic; but it is surely more natural to take it as final. Whose
purpose then does Paul have in mind? He does not personify the
law in the way he seems sometimes to personify sin. So there can
hardly be any thought of the law’s deciding to come in besides or
of the law’s having a purpose in mind. Paul is thinking of God’s
giving the law (compare the passive MEOCETEOY in Galatians 3.19),
and the purpose indicated by the tva-clause must be God’s, as
Barrett rightly assumes.’ The question then arises: Is the final
sense strictly limited to the second clause of v. 20a or do vv. 20b-21
also in some way come within its scope? Hofius is emphatic that
the final sense is sharply cut off at the end of v. 20a (‘Ein finaler
Zusammenhang zwischen dem durch die Tora veranlassten
“Grosswerden” der Stinde (v. 20a) und dem Auf-den-Plan-
Treten der tibermachtigen Gnade (v. 20b) wird dabei nicht
behauptet.’)® and also that the iva of v. 21 is dependent solely on
UITEQETEQLOOEVOEV 1 YGOtC. But Hofius is, I think, putting too
much weight on a strict interpretation of the grammar. For, if Paul
thought that the last four words of v. 20a expressed a purpose of
God in giving the law, must he not also have thought that God
would have known both that this purpose would be fulfilled and
also that he would respond to this increasing of sin by the
superabounding of his grace? And must he not also have thought
that God would have seen beyond this superabounding of grace to
that ultimate purpose that is expressed in v. 21? It seems to me
that, if we recognize that the tva-clause of v. 20 refers to a purpose
of God in giving the law, we can hardly avoid understanding that
purpose as including both the brregmeQuocEvew of grace to which
v. 20 refers and also what is introduced by the tva of v. 21.
3. We must now look more closely at the content of the (va —
clause of v. 20a. If what has just been said is on the right lines, we
must understand this clause as stating not God’s whole purpose in
giving the law but an intermediate divine purpose. If sin, already
everywhere present and disastrously active in humankind, was

* Op. cit:, p. 110.

8 Op. cit., pp. 203, 204.

18
 A Nore ON Romans 5.20-—21

‘ever to be decisively defeated and sinners forgiven in a way worthy

of the goodness and mercy of God and recreated in newness of life,
it was first of all necessary that sin should increase somewhere
among men in the sense of becoming clearly manifest’.? I take it
that Paul means that God gave the law in order that sin might be
recognized in its true character, that is, that sin (here referred to as
‘the misdeed’ or ‘trespass’ (tO TAQGTTWUA) might increase! in
the sense of being recognized as disobedience against God, trans-
gression of his known commandments (s1a@GPaocus: compare v.
14, also 4.15b), and human beings’ continuing to sin might become
the more serious, being now conscious and wilful disobedience. It
is possible, indeed likely, that Paul, in using mAeovaoyn, had in
mind also the fact that sin would actually increase in quantity as a
result of the coming of the law, since human beings’ self-
centredness, the illusion that one is God or can become God, which
is the essence of sin, is liable to respond with fury and with feverish
activity to the attack upon it which God’s law represents.'! It is
interesting to compare the way in which the tenants in the parable
of Mark 12.1—11 respond to the succession of messengers sent to
them by the owner of the vineyard. The more clearly the injustice
of their refusal to pay their dues is brought home to them, the
more ferocious becomes their treatment of the messengers and
their determination to defend their position.
But iva mAcovaoy TO TAEGATMOUG is only rightly under-
stood, when it is recognized as a purpose of God, an intermediate
purpose which has to be fulfilled, if the ultimate purpose indicated
by v. 21 is to be accomplished. Such a full disclosure of the real
nature of sin was necessary, if God’s redemption of humankind
was to be worthy of himself, of his goodness and his faithful love,
and therefore free from all condoning or glossing over of evil.

9 My A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans 1,

Edinburgh, 71990, pp. 292-3.
10 Aeovaoy could here be transitive with TO TAQANTWUG as its object; but,
in view of the fact that in the next clause the same verb must be intransitive, it is
more probably intransitive.
1 Cf. ta RAONWATA TOV GUAQTLOV TH Sid TOD VOuOV in 7.5, also 7.7-11,
Is.

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On ROMANS

But, if this interpretation of v. 20a is on the right lines, how can

it possibly be sensible to speak of Romans 5.20, as James Dunn
does, in such terms as these: ‘Most incriminating of all, “the law
came in to increase the trespass” . . .’;!? ‘the shocking assertion of
5.20’; ‘the charge Paul himself brought against the law in 5.20’;"*
‘to denigrate the law as he did in 5.20’;)> ‘the charge of 5.20’?! The
truth is, surely, that in this verse Paul is in no way intending to
criticize the law. He is indicating one vitally important function
which it has in the working out of God’s gracious purpose of
salvation.
4. ob dé éxAedvaoev 1 Guaetia must surely refer to Israel,
the people to whom the law was given. In Israel sin was manifest,
known as what it is, deliberate disobedience against the one true
God. So in this people sin indeed increased, and was exceeding
sinful. Nowhere else (except later in the Christian church) could it
ever be so serious, since nowhere else would it be such a conscious,
deliberate flouting of God’s known commandments, such a holding
in contempt of his known mercy and generosity. But Paul must
surely have had specially in mind the fearful climax of sin’s
increasing, when the leaders of Israel rejected God’s Messiah and
handed him over to the Roman authorities to be crucified, and
when the Gentile world, represented by Pontius Pilate, responded
to the Jewish leaders’ pressure and implicit threat to his position
by sacrificing justice to expediency. There the sin of humankind,
of Jew and Gentile together, reached its climax in the rejection and
crucifying of Jesus.
5. It was there that UmeQemEQlooEvOEV 1 YGOLS in mercy
for Israel and for all other peoples. Paul’s use of the rare word
vmtEQmEQLooEvELv (LSJ cites only this passage and 2 Corinthians
7.4: compare also the use of the adverb UmeQmEQLoOms in
Mark 7.37 and of the adverb UmeQexmeQuoood in Ephesians 3.20;
* ‘In Search of Common Ground’, in Paul and the Mosaic Law (see n. 4), p.

& lbid:
MEO Duchtsups 323:
'S Op. cit., p. 324.
W Op. cit. pr ook

20
 A NOTE ON Romans 5.20-21

1 Thessalonians 3.10; 5.13) marks the climax of the series

TMOAAM WAAAOV and EeQiooevoev in v. 15, TOAA@ WAAAOV and
MEQLOOELAY in v. 17, TAeovaoy and émAEdvacev in this verse,
which is such a prominent feature of this section. That the
reference of UMEQEMEQLOOEVOEV 1) YGQLC is to God’s act in the
death and raising up of Jesus is obvious (compare, for example,
5.8; 8.32). It was this act that was the decisive victory of grace.
6. But Paul looks beyond this decisive victory. Verse 21 with
its initial (va looks to the goal towards which the superabound-
ing of grace was aimed, the replacement of the reign of sin by the
reign of grace. Once more Paul draws a comparison: WomEQ
ePaothevoev Guagtia ... , ottws xai 1 yGets Paoievon
... And once again it is a comparison between things which in
almost all respects are utterly dissimilar. But in one respect they
are alike: both sin and grace may be said to reign over those
upon whom they have laid hold. Sin’s reign results in, and is
accompanied by, death, its inescapable concomitant. So closely do
they belong together, that in v. 14 Paul was able to say that death
reigned. Whereas the character of sin’s reign is indicated by the
one phrase €v t@ Navat@, Paul sets down three distinct phrases
to characterize the reign of grace. Grace, God’s grace, established
its reign over human beings by conferring upon them the gift of a
righteous status before God (for the sense of duxatoovvn here
compare vv. 16, 17, 18 and 19). That is the significance of the first
phrase. The second (gig Cwrv aimviov) indicates the final goal
towards which grace brings those over whom it exercises its reign.
The third (81a Inoot Xe.otod tod xveiov Nu@v) is funda-
mental: it is Jesus Christ who establishes and sustains the reign of
grace and who is its source. For Paul the grace of God is the grace
of Jesus Christ.
In conclusion a number of points must be made.

(i) The tva mAcovaoy TO TaQanttwUG of v. 20a expresses an

important, though of course not the only, purpose of God
in giving the law.
(ii) Though breQgemegiooevoev 1 XGOtC in v. 20b is in no
way grammatically a part of what is introduced by the

21
On ROMANS

twa of v. 20a and though vy. 21 is dependent only on

bmegemeQlooEevoev 1 YAetc, vv. 20 and 21 are never-
theless to be taken closely together, and vv. 20b-21 is to be
understood as explicatory of v. 20a.
(iii) By sAcovaoy in v. 20a Paul means (a) ‘increase’ in the
sense of becoming manifest, defined, known, recognized;
(b) ‘increase’ in the sense of being enhanced, made more
serious (the law by showing human beings that what they
are doing is contrary to God’s will gives to their continu-
ing to do it the character of conscious and deliberate dis-
obedience); and (c) ‘increase’ in the sense of increasing in
quantity (the law by challenging human beings’ self-
centredness provokes it to more frantic activity in self-
defence).
(iv) The law’s making sin to increase in the senses indicated
above is a necessary part of God’s merciful purpose for the
salvation of human beings and for the restoration of his
whole creation. Sin had to be revealed in its true character,
if God was to forgive and renew human beings in a way
worthy of himself as the good, merciful and faithful God
he is and consonant with their true dignity as persons
morally accountable. What was at stake was surely nothing
less than God’s being the God he is, and grace’s being true,
not bogus, grace.
(v) The law, in its action of making sin clearly visible and
sharply defined as what it is, belongs (pace Hofius) not to
the Adam-side but to the Christ-side of the Adam—Christ
antithesis. It is not a part of the disease but a necessary part
of the cure.
(v1) Romans 5.20 is not at all a criticism of the law.

Ze
 3

Romans 6.1—14 Revisited

In volume 1 of my commentary on Romans, which was first

published in 1975,' I suggested that the key to understanding
Romans 6.1—14 was to recognize that, for Paul, there are four
different senses in which we may speak of our dying with Christ
and (corresponding to them) four different senses in which we
may speak of our being raised with him, and that these need to be
carefully distinguished but at the same time understood in close
relation to one another. I still hold by what I then said; but, in view
of the importance of this passage in Paul’s theology, I want, if I
can, to clarify what I was trying to say but failed to make as clear as
at the time I thought I had done. I called the four senses: (i) the
juridical sense (I regarded ‘juridical’ as an unsatisfactory descrip-
tion, but could not think of a more suitable single word); (ii) the
baptismal sense; (111) the moral sense; (iv) the eschatological sense.
Since in each case we have to do with both (a) a dying with Christ
(it is also a dying to sin) and also (b) a being raised with him, we get
an eightfold scheme. That Paul has not in these verses expressly
set out this eightfold scheme as such is, of course, obvious. My
contention was, and is, that what he has said presupposes it, and
can be fully understood only if it is borne in mind. My intention is
not to undertake here a fresh exegesis of the passage, following the
order of Paul’s sentences, but rather to look at the elements of this
* First published in The Expository Times 106 (1994-95), pp. 40-3.

‘4 Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans 1,

Edinburgh, '1975, pp. 296-320.

23
On ROMANS

eightfold scheme in turn, to see how far all of them can be shown
to be present in it either explicitly or implicitly.
(i.a) The first sense, in which, according to Paul as I under-
stand him, we may speak of our dying with Christ is certainly
highly paradoxical: we died with Christ on the first Good Friday.
This is surely the significance of the preposition ‘for’ (btéQ) in
such places as Romans 5.6 (‘Christ died for the ungodly’), 8 (“God
commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us’); 8.32 (‘He that spared not his own
Son, but delivered him up for us all’); 14.15 (‘him for whom Christ
died’); 2 Corinthians 5.14 (‘one died for all’), 15 (‘he died for all
... him who for their sakes [Greek: ‘for them] died’), 21 (‘Him
who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf’ [Greek: ‘for
us’]); Galatians 2.20 (‘the Son of God, who. . . gave himself up for
me’); 1 Thessalonians 5.10 (‘who died for us’).? God’s decision to
take our sin upon himself in the person of his own dear Son
involved the decision to see Christ’s death as died ‘for us’ and to
see us as having died in his death. So this having died with Christ
of ours is a matter of God’s gracious decision about us. As far as
our status with him is concerned, he has chosen to relegate our
sinful life to the past. I take it that it is in this sense that Paul refers
to himself and the Roman Christians in v. 2 as ‘We who died to sin’
and in v. 8 argues from the fact of our having died with Christ.’
This interpretation receives strong support from 2 Corinthians
5.14 (‘For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus
judge, that one died for all, therefore all died’). It is, I think, this
death in God’s sight to which Romans 7.4 (‘Wherefore, my
brethren, ye also were made dead to the law through the body of
Christ’) also refers: compare too v. 6 (‘having died to that wherein
we were holden’). And Colossians 3.3 (‘For ye died’) should, of
course, also be compared, even though the Pauline authorship of
Colossians is disputed.
> Cf. Romans 4.25; 1 Corinthians 15.3; Galatians 1.4: in these a ‘for us’ is
implicit.
* Though the possibility that Paul was already thinking of baptism in v. 2 and
that he may have had it in mind in v. 8 perhaps cannot be altogether excluded, it
does not seem very likely.

24
 ROMANS 6.1—14 REVISITED

(i.b) Romans 6.1—14 clearly does not say expressly that Paul
and the Roman Christians were raised with Christ on the first
Easter morning in God’s sight; but vv. 11 and 13 seem to point
strongly in this direction. I take it that in the former verse Paul is
exhorting the Roman Christians to recognize the truth that they
themselves are ‘dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus’.
That is the truth of the gospel about them. God wills to see them
as having died in Christ’s death and having been raised in his
resurrection. In the latter verse the words ‘as alive from the dead’
underline the fact that it is a resurrection that is in mind and make
it abundantly clear that Paul does think that the people he is
addressing have already been raised from the dead in some sense.
In view of these two verses, I cannot accept the contention (though
it is quite often stated very confidently) that there is a substantial
disagreement between this passage and Colossians 3.1, which uses
a past tense of the resurrection of believers (‘If then [the “if” must
here be equivalent to “seeing that”] ye were raised together with
Christ’). The facts that in Romans 6 Paul nowhere actually uses a
past tense with reference to it and that he uses the future in vv. 5
and 8 (‘we shall be also by the likeness of his resurrection’ and ‘we
shall also live with him’) may indeed reflect his awareness of the
danger of misunderstanding on the part of some Christians who
are attracted by a false realized eschatology with its illusions of
already being filled, already having become rich, already reigning
(1 Cor. 4.8). It was — and still is — important to avoid giving any
encouragement to such triumphalism. But that Paul, at the time of
the writing of Romans, did not think that there is any sense in
which believers have already been raised with Christ seems to me
to be disproved by these two verses.
(ii.a) The second sense in which we may be said to die with
Christ is the baptismal. Verses 3 and 4a indicate that the Roman
Christians’ baptism is intimately connected with their relation-
ship to Christ’s death. They were baptized into his death; through
their baptism they were buried with him into death. But, since
there are a number of passages in Paul’s letters which speak of
Christians’ death with Christ and new life in him as based on the
gospel events themselves and make no mention of baptism (e.g.

25
On ROMANS

Rom. 7.4, 6; 2 Cor. 5.14f, 17; Gal. 2.19f), it is clear that he did not
think of baptism as actually effecting this death with Christ.
Baptism does not establish the relationship. It attests a relationship
already established. For Paul, baptism, which, as the act of the
person baptized, is the outward ratification of the human decision
of faith,’ is, as God’s act, the sign and seal and pledge that the
benefits of Christ’s death for all men really do apply to this
individual human being in particular. Our baptism is God’s
confirmation, God’s guarantee, of the fact that Christ’s death was
for us, that God sees us as having died in his death.
(ii.b) Nowhere in Romans 6.1-—14 is it said explicitly that those
whom Paul is addressing have been raised with Christ in baptism;
but it is surely implied. Paul has spoken of their having been
baptized into Christ’s death; but, if baptism were only the seal of
their interest in his death and not also the seal of their interest in
his resurrection, it would be of but little value, for Christ’s death
has no saving efficacy apart from its sequel in his resurrection.
There can be no doubt that Paul thought that to be baptized into
Christ was to be baptized into him who was not only crucified for
us but was also raised up for us. The thought that Christians have
been raised with Christ in baptism is surely implicit here. It is
possible that its not being made explicit reflects Paul’s awareness
of the danger of Christian triumphalism (cf. (i.b) above). It is to be
noted that Colossians 2.12, by contrast, does speak explicitly of
believers as having been raised with Christ in baptism.
(iii.a) Again, it is not expressly said in this passage that
Christians have to seek to die daily and hourly to sin — the third
sense of our dying with Christ. But it is clearly implied. Thus the
response called for by the question, ‘We who died to sin, how shall
we any longer live therein?’ in v. 2 is a recognition that, instead of
continuing to live in sin, we must try to die to it. And the thought
that we have to strive constantly to die to sin is surely implicit in
the last clause of v. 6 (‘that we should no longer be in bondage to

* Where this action of the person baptized is involved, as must usually have
been the case in the early days of the church, this element of the rite may be
regarded as the beginning of dying and being raised with Christ in sense iii.

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 ROMANS 6.1—14 REVISITED

sin’), in view of the way in which Paul has expressed himself in the
earlier part of the verse (‘knowing this, that our old man was
crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away’). And,
when in v. 11 Paul exhorts the Roman Christians to reckon with
the fact that they have already died to sin in God’s sight, in God’s
merciful decision about them, he surely intends them to draw the
conclusion that they must now try to die to sin in their actual living.
Finally, the same practical conclusion is expressed in different
terms 1n vv. 12 and 13, when he tells them to stop allowing sin to
reign unopposed in their mortal selves in such a way that they obey
the selfs desires and to stop placing their members at sin’s disposal
as tools of unrighteousness.
Outside this passage the thought of the Christian life as
involving a constant striving to die to sin is expressed in various
ways. In 8.13 Paul speaks of mortifying (@avatotv) the deeds of
the body: with this may be compared Colossians 3.5 (‘Mortify
(vexQovv) therefore your members which are upon the earth. . .’).
The underlying thought is the same, when the image of putting
off soiled garments is employed, as in Romans 13.12 (‘let us
therefore cast off the works of darkness’) and Colossians 3.8 (‘But
now put ye also away all these; anger, wrath, malice. . .’).> Whether
the language used is of divesting oneself of one’s clinging sins like a
soiled garment or of putting them to death, the basic idea is the
same, that the Christian is to try to die daily and hourly to sin.
Again, when Paul speaks of the believers’ no longer living to
themselves (2 Cor. 5.15), the thought of their dying to themselves
is close at hand. To die to sin is to reject, renounce, say ‘No’ to,
that idolized self which is the essence of our sinfulness. We may, I
think, recognize here a point of contact with Jesus’ saying in Mark

5 Pace C. F. D. Moule, The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Colossians and to
Philemon, Cambridge, 1957, pp. 117f, and REB, which connect ‘out of your
mouth’ with ‘put away’, I cannot help thinking that, in view of the presence of
the putting off and putting on of clothing metaphor in vv. 9, 10 and 12, and the
fact that the same verb is contrasted with ‘put on’ in Ephesians 4.22 and 24 (and
also in Romans 13.12, if the Nestle-Aland text is right), it is more natural to see
the putting off of clothing metaphor here than to understand Paul to mean
‘banish from your mouths’.

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8.34 (‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself’).
There is a startlingly memorable sentence in one of John
Chrysostom’s sermons on Romans, which puts succinctly what we
may call the negative side of the imperative of Christian baptism:
‘If then thou hast died in baptism, stay dead!’ (ci totvuv damé8aves
év tM Pantiouatt, weve vexQods).° But, as we all learn by
experience, the task of staying dead in John Chrysostom’s sense is
very strenuous, a matter of striving constantly to die afresh to sin.
(iii.b) The truth that Christians must constantly try to allow
themselves to be raised with Christ in their day-to-day living is
most plainly expressed in v. 4, in which the clause ‘as Christ was
raised from the dead through the glory of the Father’ indicates
that the moral conduct denoted by ‘walk in newness of life’ is being
regarded as a resurrection. Coming as it does immediately after
v. 4b, which undoubtedly refers to the moral conduct of Christians
(‘walk’ is often used by Paul to denote a person’s conduct, as, for
example, in 8.4; 13.13; 14.15), v. 5b should also, I think, be
understood to refer to Christians’ conduct: in our concrete daily
living we are to be conformed to Christ’s resurrection. The thread
of Paul’s argument from v. 4b by way of vv. 5b, 6c, 8b through to
vv. 12 and 13 seems to me to demand that v. 8b should also be
taken to refer to Christians’ conduct, though it is possible that the
thought of the eschatological fulfilment of the life already begun
may also be present. The future indicatives €o0ue8a in v. 5b and
ovCnoouev in v. 8b are, I suggest, correctly translated ‘we are to
be’ and ‘we are to live with’.’ In v. 11, though ‘alive unto God in

° J.-P.Migne, Patrologia Graeca 60, col. 485.

’ I suggest that we should recognize here what might be called a future of
obligation, ‘we are to be’, ‘we are to live with’. In support of this suggestion the
following points may be made: (1) the use of the future indicative to express
divine commands is frequently found in the Bible (e.g. the 2nd person singular
in the Decalogue and in Deuteronomy 6.5 and Leviticus 19.18; the 2nd person
plural in Leviticus 1.2; the 3rd person singular in Leviticus 1.3; the 3rd person
plural in Leviticus 1.5): compare the use of the future indicative in English in
peremptory commands, as, for example, in the armed forces. (2) We have also
the occasional use of the future indicative in the New Testament in deliberative
questions (e.g. in Romans 6.1 where ‘What shall we say then?’ means ‘What are

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Christ Jesus’ is naturally understood as referring to God’s gracious

decision with regard to the Roman Christians, the imperative
‘reckon ye’ may be said to denote that intellectual action of
recognition and reflection which naturally leads to trying to walk
in newness of life. And the duty to allow oneself to be raised with
Christ in one’s daily living is lastly expressed in the injunction,
‘present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your
members as instruments of righteousness unto God’ (v. 13).
Outside this passage we may recognize the same basic thought,
for example, in 2 Corinthians 5.15, where Paul speaks of those
who live living ‘unto him who for their sakes died and rose again’,
and in places where the image of putting on fresh clothing is used
like Romans 13.12 (‘let us put on the armour oflight’) and 14 (‘put
ye on the Lord Jesus Christ’) and Colossians 3.12 (‘Put on therefore
. a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, long-
suffering’).
(iv.a) There is, I think, no reference in Romans 6.1—14 to the
fact that we shall finally die to sin, when we actually die. But this is
the one item in our eightfold scheme which is unquestionably
obvious without being stated. It was doubtless as obvious to Paul
as it is to us.
(iv.b) It is possible (as was indicated above) that the thought of
our resurrection with Christ in the fourth and last sense (that of
our being raised in the final resurrection) is present as a secondary
reference in v. 8b (conceivably also in v. 5b) as well as the thought
of our resurrection in the moral sense. It is certain that the
whole of chapter 6 is enframed by the references to eternal life in
5.21 and 6.22 and 23 — that is, to that eternal life, to which the final

we to say then?’, and in Luke 22.49, where ‘shall we smite with the sword?’
means ‘are we to smite with the sword?’). The latter example suggests the
conceivability of a corresponding ‘We shall (not) smite with the sword’ in the
sense ‘We are (not) to smite with the sword’. (3) It would be natural for an officer
briefing his company to say to them, ‘At such and such an hour we shall do such
and such’, meaning ‘. . . we are to. . .’ (this being the order he has received).
Similarly, in a church service the leader might say, ‘After this hymn we shall
_remain standing . . .’, meaning that the intention is that this should happen.

Zo
On ROMANS

resurrection is the entrance. For explicit statements concerning

that final resurrection we have to look outside Romans 6.1—14.
Suffice it here to mention just three places out of many which could
be cited: Romans 8.11 (‘he that raised up Christ Jesus from the
dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies through his Spirit that
dwelleth in you’); in the same chapter v. 23 (‘we ourselves groan
within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption
of our body’); and, in that passage which is something of a parallel
to Romans 6.1—14, Colossians 3.4 (‘When Christ, who is our life,
shall be manifested, then shall ye also with him be manifested in
glory’).
In conclusion, some loose ends need gathering up. I mentioned
above the possibility that Paul’s not using past tenses with refer-
ence to the resurrection of believers might reflect his awareness of
the danger of Christian triumphalism. That he was aware of this
danger I regard as certain. But another explanation of what we find
particularly in Romans 6.2—5 and 8 is possible, as I suggested in
my commentary, namely, that he felt the need to be succinct and
so decided to ‘appropriate’ the dying language to God’s merciful
decision about us and to our baptism, and to ‘appropriate’ the
resurrection language to the Christian’s present life and to the
eschatological future, rather than to speak of both dying and being
raised in each case. This would make for succinctness. It would
give a convenient and tidy arrangement of two and two, and would
also have the effect of bringing out the positive nature of the new
obedience and of the eschatological future.
The thought of Paul’s actually wishing to bring out the
positive nature of the Christian’s present life may perhaps seem
surprising in view of the fact that he had to contend with the sort
of illusions to which | Corinthians 4.8 refers. But, while I am sure
that it is important for us to be on our guard against Christian
triumphalism (I for one regard the refusal of some people to
recognize the reference of Romans 7.14—25 to Christians as a
thoroughly disastrous error!), I think it is equally important that
we should not belittle the significance of that newness of life, to
which God has certainly called us, however bad we may be at
responding to his call. It seems to me that Romans 6.4b, 5b, 8b and

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13b should encourage us to recognize that some light from Christ’s

resurrection falls on even the fumbling and faltering first
beginnings of being turned in the direction of obedience which are
all we have to show. Those first faint signs of newness of life should
not be mistaken for the eschatological glory. The distinction
between sense iii and sense iv must certainly not be blurred. But,
in our proper determination not so to concentrate on the
resurrection as to forget the cross, we must not fail to remember
that the fact that Christ himself has already been raised from the
dead has a significant bearing on our present life.

31
rants
ial

we 4
We
 4

Sanctification as Freedom:
Paul’s ‘Teaching on Sanctification
With special reference to the Epistle to the Romans

The bold, categorical statement of Romans 8.2 that ‘the law of the
Spirit of life has in Christ Jesus set thee free from the law of sin
and of death’ sums up in a striking way Paul’s teaching on
sanctification. What he has to say on this subject may, I think, be
profitably considered within the framework which this startling
affirmation provides.
In the above translation’ I have assumed that ‘in Christ Jesus’ is
to be connected not with ‘life’ but with the verb ‘has set free’, and
also that ‘thee’ is to be accepted as the original reading, the variants,
‘me’, ‘us’, and the absence of an expressed object, being readily
explicable as assimilation to the use of the first person singular in
chapter 7, as assimilation to the first person plural in 8.4, and as an
accidental error, respectively. A puzzling feature of the verse is the
way in which the word ‘law’ is used. The right clue to under-
standing this is, I think, the recognition that Paul is using it
metaphorically. He is not referring to the Old Testament law or to
any other law in the ordinary sense of the word, but to an authority

* First published in Reformed Review 48 (1994-95), pp. 217-29 (in issue 3,

which was a tribute to Prof. James I. Cook), and republished in Metanota 5
(1995), pp. 194-208.

! In this and the other quotations from Romans I have used the translation in
my Romans: a shorter commentary, Edinburgh, *1995, by permission of T. & T.
Clark. The italics in these quotations indicate words without equivalent in the
Greek, added in order to complete the sense.

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or control that is being exercised. He has already used the word in

this metaphorical way more than once in the previous chapter
(7.21, 23 (the first and third occurrences of the word), 25 (the
second occurrence)). So here by ‘the law of the Spirit of life’ he
means, I take it, the authority, the control, the compelling pressure,
which the life-giving Spirit of God exerts upon those whom he
indwells, and by ‘the law of sin and of death’ the authority, control,
compelling pressure, exerted by sin, with death as its inevitable
consequence. Paul is saying that ‘in Christ Jesus’, that is, on the
basis of what God has done in Christ, the authority exerted by the
Holy Spirit has freed the believer from the authority of sin and
death.
But, in order to understand this affirmation at all adequately,
we must examine it a good deal more closely.
With regard to ‘the law of the Spirit of life’, it is clear from 8.9
(‘But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, seeing that God’s
Spirit dwells in you. (If someone does not possess Christ’s Spirit,
then he does not belong to Christ.)’) that Paul believed that every
Christian is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. God has not only come to
human beings externally in his Son Jesus Christ and in the message
about him; he also comes to them internally, actually entering into
them and from within making them open to his external Word, to
Jesus Christ. Paul calls the Holy Spirit ‘the Spirit of life’, that is,
the Spirit who gives life; and this description is supported by what
is said in 8.6, 10, 11 and 13. Something of what the Spirit’s giving
of life embraces will become clearer, when the verb ‘has set free’ is
considered. For the moment it is enough to draw attention to the
connection with the quotation from Habakkuk 2.4 in 1.17 (‘But he
who is righteous by faith shall live’). Paul would seem to be
pointing to the rdle of the Holy Spirit in the accomplishment of
that promise.
By contrast, ‘the law of sin and of death’ is the power which sin
has over us, the bondage in which it holds us, and its inevitable
concomitant, the power of death. The essence of sin, according to
the Bible, is the attempt to put oneself in God’s place, to make
one’s own ego and the satisfaction of its desires the centre of one’s
life. That is the fundamental sin of every one of us, whether we are

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unbelievers or believers. Illuminatingly in Genesis 3 the serpent is

represented as setting before Eve the beguiling, flattering, enticing
promise, ‘ye shall be as God’. Sin is the illusion that one is God, or
that one can be God, and all that springs from that illusion. One
form which this idolatry of the ego takes — and it is an exceedingly
virulent form — is the egotism of the group, whether the family, the
tribe, the nation, or the social or economic class (and must we not
also reckon with the possibility of a group-egotism of the church?).
The law of sin is the dominion exercised over us by this idolatry of
the ego. To be enslaved to this law is to be in rebellion against the
true God.
In the Greek text, before the verb ‘has set free’ Paul inserts ‘in
Christ Jesus’. It is on the basis, and only on the basis, of what God
has done in Christ that the liberation, of which he is now speaking,
has become possible. Prior to, and basic to, this liberation by the
Spirit, which we may call the second liberation, there was a first
liberation, that redemption, concerning which 3.21—26 speaks, and
to which 4.25; 5.6—9a, 10a also refer. That was the liberation from
God’s condemnation (8:1) brought about by God’s taking upon
himself in the person of his own dear Son the guilt, disgrace and
grief of all our sin, and dealing with them once for all in his suffer-
ings, his death, his resurrection. It was a liberation altogether objec-
tive, accomplished externally to us and altogether independently
of us, but on our behalf. It is on the basis of this first liberation
accomplished by Christ that the Holy Spirit has now effected that
second liberation to which 8.2 refers. The phrase ‘in Christ Jesus’,
then, directs the thoughts of the Roman Christians back to what is
the very heart of the gospel, the grace of God in Jesus Christ, as
the ultimate source of their release from the law of sin and of death.
There is still one more word which it will be convenient to
consider before turning to Paul’s ‘has set free’, and that is the word
‘thee’. I have already referred to the fact that there are textual
variants here. Their presence is an indication that early copyists
were puzzled by the use of the second person singular in this verse.
While Paul does quite often elsewhere in Romans, for the sake of
greater liveliness, address the individual member as representative
of a particular group, using the second person singular, his use of it

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here is quite unexpected and, moreover, confined to the one word.

It is possible to think of several reasons Paul may have had for
wanting to make this particular sentence specially striking and
emphatic. He may have felt that it was important, in view of the
apparent tension between what he was affirming here and what he
had just said in the latter part of the previous chapter, to give extra
emphasis to his statement, so that there mightbe no doubt that he
was really meaning what he was saying. He may have wanted to
bring home to each member of the church the fact that this libera-
tion really did include him or her personally. He may have hoped
to challenge each individual to grasp the proffered gift and not be
content to be a merely passive object of the Spirit’s action.
So we come to the verb ‘has set free’. There can scarcely be any
doubt that this Greek aorist indicative is affirming that a liberation
has actually been accomplished. What then is this liberation? In
what sense has the law of the Spirit freed the believer from the law
of sin and death? To put the question differently, what does Paul
have to tell us, particularly in the Epistle to the Romans, about the
Holy Spirit’s work of sanctification in the church?
Every serious attempt to answer this question immediately
comes up against a difficulty. Clearly Paul’s ‘has set free’ in 8.2
cannot be explained properly in isolation from 7.14—25; and, unfor-
tunately, though, hardly surprisingly, concerning that passage
there has been much controversy down the centuries, and its inter-
pretation is still as hotly disputed as ever. The first person singular
used in it has been variously explained as referring (i) to Paul’s
own experience as a Christian; (11) to his pre-conversion experience
as he saw it at the time; (iii) to his pre-conversion experience as
seen by him later in the light of his Christian faith; (iv) to the
experience of the non-Christian Jew as seen by himself; (v) to the
experience of the non-Christian Jew as seen through Christian
eyes; (vi) to the experience of the Christian who is still living on an
inferior level which could have been left behind; (vii) to the
experience of Christians generally. Of these (ii) seems to be ruled
out by the verdict which, according to Philippians 3.6b, Paul,
before his conversion, passed on his own life. And (iv) may be set
aside as being inconsistent with the picture of Jewish self-

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complacency in chapter 2. The use of present tenses throughout

the passage is against both (ii) and (iii), and the order of the
sentences in vv. 24—25 is an objection to (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) and (vi);
for v. 25b is an embarrassment to all who see in v. 24 the cry of the
unconverted person (or of a Christian living on a low level of
Christian life) and in v. 25a an indication that the desired
deliverance has actually occurred, since, coming after the
thanksgiving, it seems to imply that the condition of the speaker
after the deliverance is just the same as it was before it. Moreover,
v. 24 would be highly melodramatic, if it were not a cry for
deliverance from present distress.
Acceptance of (i) or (vii) has seemed impossible to very many,
because it has seemed to be incompatible with what Paul has said
of the believer’s liberation from bondage to sin in 6.6, 14, 17f, 22
and in 8.2 and to involve attributing to him far too gloomy a view
of the Christian life. But the other explanations, which take the
reference to be to the still unconverted person, are, I am more and
more convinced, exegetically unsound and untenable. For the
person who speaks in 7.14—25 is one who wills the good and hates
the evil (vv. 15, 16, 19, 20), who delights in God’s law in his inner
man (v. 22) and serves it with his mind (v. 25b). And that is not
how Paul depicts the still unconverted. The idea of an internal
conflict between a better self and a worse self is, of course, familiar
enough to non-Christians; but so serious a conflict as is here
described is surely only possible, where the Holy Spirit is present
and active. It is the Holy Spirit’s work of sanctification which is to
be recognized in the willing the good and hating the evil, in the
delighting in God’s law, in the mind’s recognition of, and being
engaged to, the law, which are here described. And ‘Wretched man
that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?’ (v. 24) is
surely far more understandable as the cry of one in whom the Holy
Spirit has begun his work and who therefore has begun to have
both a true knowledge of sin’s tyranny over his life and also a
fervent longing for, and a firm hope of, full deliverance from it,
than as the cry of one as yet unconverted. For myself I can only
conclude that it is (i) or (vii) that should be accepted. As between
these two, since the first person singular in vv. 7—13 can hardly be

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taken as strictly autobiographical, it is probably better to accept

(vii) than (i), and to understand Paul to be referring to Christians
generally but to recognize that his use of this vivid and forceful
way of speaking reflects his deep sense of personal involvement in
what he is saying.
If then it is the experience of Christians which is depicted in
7.14-25, it follows that the statement in 8.2 that ‘the law of the
Spirit of life has . . . set thee free from the law of sin and of death’
cannot mean that the Spirit has so fully set the Christian free from
the power of sin, that it now has no hold over him. An inter-
pretation of ‘has set free’ has to be spelled out, which does justice
both to the amazing affirmation of 8.2 and also to the confession of
7.14, ‘I am carnal, a slave under sin’s power’. When it is realized
that Paul’s doctrine of sanctification is to be found not in chapter 8
in separation from 7.14—25 but in chapters 6—8 taken together (with
further working out in 12.1—15.13), and the temptation to oppose
8.1ff (thought of as descriptive of the Christian’s situation) to 7.14—
25 (thought of as descriptive of the condition of the not yet
converted) is resolutely resisted, it becomes possible to reach an
understanding of Paul’s ‘has set free’ that is realistic and truly
Christian, and that neither encourages in those Christians who are
most liable to self-complacency the illusion that they are much
better Christians than they actually are, nor robs less self-assured
Christians of the encouragement and comfort which they should
have from these chapters of Romans.
The following paragraphs are an attempt to draw out the
meaning of Paul’s ‘has set free’ and, in so doing, to sketch a rough
outline of his teaching on sanctification as set out in Romans.
1. First of all it must be said that this ‘has set free’ refers to the
beginning of an action, not to its completion. What was called
above the ‘first liberation’, that effected by Christ in his death and
resurrection, is indeed complete, his finished work; but the
liberation which the Spirit works has not been completed for any
one, so long as that person’s earthly life lasts. The completion of
our liberation from the power of sin and of death is not until our
death and resurrection. But the beginning of this action is
something altogether significant and decisive. When the beginning

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has been made, the earnest of final fulfilment is already present.

Paul is affirming that the Roman Christians are people, the bonds
of whose enslavement to sin, to the tyranny of self, God’s Spirit
has begun to loosen.
2. The beginning of liberation is the making of a person open
to Jesus Christ, the creation of incipient faith. The Holy Spirit
frees the human person to begin to believe. Relevant here is 5.5, in
which the statement that ‘God’s love has been poured out in our
hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us’ is best
explained as a pregnant construction, the meaning being that
God has lavished his love upon us and its reality has been brought
home to our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. By
bringing home to a person the reality of God’s love he creates the
response of faith. And the faith he has created he also sustains,
increases, renews.
3. Even the first beginnings of faith bring with them a com-
mencement of the renewal of the mind to which 12.2 refers.
Paul gives no encouragement at all to anti-intellectualism, to the
disparagement of reason. But he recognizes that the intellect is
fallen like the rest of the human being. He knows that human
beings ‘have become futile in their reasonings, and their uncom-
prehending heart has been darkened’ (1.21). Because they have
failed to take God into account and have given, each to his own
ego, the worship which was due to him alone, their thinking has
become disjoined from reality and subject to distortion and corrup-
tion. Their fallen minds are flawed and unable to function with
proper objectivity. So Paul sees the need for them to be renewed.
The renewing of the mind is an essential part of the liberation of
which 8.2 speaks, an essential part of the Holy Spirit’s work of
sanctification. Paul’s ‘has set free’ includes, then, at least a
beginning of this renewing of the mind. The power of the Holy
Spirit has begun the work of freeing these Christians’ minds from
the corruption, the distortions, the confusion and the lack of proper
objectivity, resulting from their enslavement to self, and bringing
their thinking under the discipline of the gospel.
4. The liberation of which Paul speaks is a setting free to resist
‘sin’s reign over one’s life. When he says to the Roman Christians

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‘Stop, then, allowing sin to reign wnopposed in your mortal selves

... stop placing your members at the disposal of sin .. .” (6.12—
13), he is bidding them do something they could not do, had not
the Holy Spirit made them free to do it. It is the Holy Spirit who
sets us free to stop permitting sin’s tyranny over us to go un-
challenged, to stop yielding up all our capacities tamely for sin to
exploit, to begin to rebel against the usurper and to fight back in
support of our rightful owner, God. We have not been freed in the
sense that sin has no longer any hold on us; but we have been freed
to the extent that we need no longer be sin’s unresisting slaves.
The Christian is like a country which, having been overrun and
occupied by a brutal enemy, is at last being invaded by a friendly
force determined to drive out the occupying power. As the inhabi-
tants of an occupied country might rise up against the occupying
power, so the Christian is now in a position at least to show on
whose side his sympathies are by putting up some resistance to the
tyranny of his own ego, the reign of sin over his life. In the conflict
which is being waged between the Holy Spirit and the occupying
power of sin he may now begin to act as the Holy Spirit’s partisan,
one who seeks to walk ‘not . . . according to the flesh but according
to the Spirit’ (8.4).
5. The Spirit who has freed us to begin to resist sin’s tyranny
over us is also ‘the Spirit of adoption by whose enabling we cry,
“Abba, Father”’ (8.15). He has made us free to address God by
the name of ‘Father’, assuring us ‘that we are children of God’
(8.16). Paul uses in v. 15 the present indicative, ‘we cry’. If we are
Christians at all, we do this, though it may be only very feebly,
very falteringly, and with very limited comprehension of what we
are doing. It is the Holy Spirit’s continuing work of sanctification
to make us do it more and more understandingly, sincerely,
confidently, humbly. And to address God as Father sincerely and
seriously must mean trying to live as his children and therefore
striving with all one’s might to be and think and say and do what
is well-pleasing to him and to avoid all that displeases him. One
implication of this addressing God as Father, which down the
centuries Christians have been strangely slow to recognize, may be
mentioned here, namely, that thus to address God the Creator

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 SANCTIFICATION AS FREEDOM

carries with it the obligation to respect the creation as his creation

and to refrain from all abuse of it. And this must surely include
treating with considerateness and compassion all those creatures
he has endowed with the capacity to feel pain and fear, and
respecting the dignity which inalienably belongs to them as his
sentient creatures. In this connection 8.19-22 is surely highly
significant both by reason of its contents and also by reason of its
being placed where it is in chapter 8.
6. In enabling us to cry ‘Abba, Father’ the Holy Spirit makes
us free to engage in Christian prayer. The gift of the freedom
to pray and the sustaining of that freedom from day to day are a
vital part of our sanctification. The ‘has set free’ of 8.2 means that
those who are being addressed have at least been so far liberated
from the tyranny of their self-centredness that prayer is now a real
possibility for them. The loneliness and isolation of their slavery to
sin have begun to be overcome. Instead of being altogether turned
in on themselves they are free to turn towards God, to enter into
conversation with him, and more and more to live consciously in
his presence. Paul recognizes that the believer’s praying is char-
acterized by weakness and ignorance, and is altogether dependent
on the Holy Spirit’s help. Thus he writes in 8.26—27: ‘the Spirit
also helps our weakness; for we do not know what it is right for us
to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with unspoken
groanings, and he who searches the hearts knows what is the
intention of the Spirit, that he is interceding for the saints accord-
ing to God’s will’. At the same time, he knows that the freedom,
which the Spirit gives, is real freedom and that the believers in
Rome have therefore a serious part to play. So he writes to them: ‘I
exhort you [, brethren,] by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love
of the Spirit to join earnestly with me in prayers on my behalf to
God, that I may be delivered from the disobedient in Judaea and
that my ministry to Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints, so
that, if it be God’s will, my coming to you may be a matter of joy
and IJ may find full refreshment in your fellowship’ (15.30—31).
Paul’s use of cuvaywvioao8at (which we have rendered by ‘join
earnestly with’) at least suggests that he sees the believer’s part in
prayer as a serious, indeed, a strenuous activity. Elsewhere he bids

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them ‘persevere in prayer’ (12.12). He realizes how strong the

temptation will be to give up praying or at least to become careless
and slack about it. It is, I think, clear that, for Paul, it is vitally
important that Christians should use to the full that freedom to
pray which the Holy Spirit has given them, persisting steadfastly
both in prayers together in the Christian community and in private
prayers, and also trying at all times to live prayerfully.
7. The liberation of which 8.2 speaks is also a setting free to
turn in the direction of obedience to God’s law, to make a
beginning of trying seriously to obey it. I think it is fair to say
that to address, and continue addressing, the true God as Father
(8.15b) with full understanding, full seriousness, full sincerity,
is all that God’s law requires of us. But, since our praying
‘Abba, Father’ is not yet with such fullness of understanding,
seriousness and sincerity, we cannot dispense with the help and
guidance which God’s law affords. Despite opinions to the contrary
often expressed, I am still convinced that Paul regards the Old
Testament law as having continuing validity for Christians, though
recognizing — and this is extremely important — that, because its
true meaning has now been made manifest in Jesus Christ, the
relation of Christians to it is fundamentally different from the
relation to it of those who do not yet believe in him.’ They will no
longer imagine that it is something which they can so adequately
fulfil as to establish a claim on God. Nor will they any more
understand it in isolation from him, who is its ‘goal’ (so I
understand ¢e/os in 10.4). But they will understand it, as it is
illuminated and clarified by the life, death, resurrection and
exaltation of Jesus Christ, as being both witness to him and his
saving work and also a God-given guide for their attempts to live
as God’s children. It is, I think, implied by 8.3—4 taken in con-
junction with 8.2 that the liberation which the Holy Spirit effects
must include a beginning in the lives of Christians of that fulfilment
of the law which God intended to bring about when he sent his

* Reference may be made to my article, ‘Has the Old Testament law a place in
the Christian life? A response to Professor Westerholm’, in Irish Biblical Studies
15 (1993), pp. 50-64, reprinted below as Chapter 9.

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 SANCTIFICATION AS FREEDOM

Son to deal with sin. Significantly Paul uses in 8.4 the singular tO
dixai@pua (‘the righteous requirement’), bringing out the essential
and intelligible unity behind and beneath the multiplicity of the
law’s commands. In 7.14—25 we have a vivid picture of the conflict
which takes place in those in whom the Holy Spirit is carrying on
his work of sanctification. Here is one who has been freed to will
the good and to hate the evil (vv. 15, 16, 19, 20), who already in his
‘inner man’ (that is, that new self which the Holy Spirit has brought
into being) ‘delight[s] in God’s law’ (v. 22) and with his ‘mind’
(that is, his mind as it is being renewed by the Holy Spirit (cf.
12.2)) ‘serve[s] the law of God’ (v. 25b). Here is one who in the
depths of his personality in so far as it has been renewed is engaged
to God’s law. In this person the promise of Jeremiah 31.33 has
begun to be fulfilled: ‘I will put my law in their inward parts, and
in their heart will I write it.’
8. But the Old Testament law itself provides a summary of
what its righteous requirement means in the two passages (Deut.
6.4—5; Lev. 19.18b) which Jesus quoted in answer to the scribe’s
question (Mark 12.28—34; Matt. 22.3440). What the law requires
is that one should love God with all one’s heart and soul and might
and should love one’s neighbour as oneself. So the freedom to try
to obey God’s law, which the Holy Spirit has given to us, is
freedom to try to love God with all one’s heart and soul and might
and to love one’s neighbour as oneself. Since 1} @yastyn ToD Beot
in 5.5 surely refers to God’s love for us, not our love to God, there
is only one place in Romans where yarn or @yarGv is used with
reference to human beings’ love to God, and that is 8.28: ‘And we
know that all things prove advantageous for their true good to those
who love God’. But this is evidence enough that Paul thinks of
believers as people who love God. The liberation, of which 8.2
speaks, is a setting free at least to begin to love God. But Paul
speaks more often of the love which Christians owe their fellow
human beings. In 12.9 (‘Let your love be genuine’) the reference is
probably to love for fellow human beings generally, since the next
verse (‘In your love for the brethren show one another affectionate
kindness’) will have more point, if the love mentioned in v. 9 is not
~ just the same thing as the love for the brethren referred to in v. 10,

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but an all-embracing love. All-embracing too most probably is the

love enjoined in 13.8—10, since the universal negative with which
v. 8 begins makes it natural to understand ‘one another’ and ‘the
other’ in v. 8 and ‘neighbour’ in vv. 9 and 10 in the widest possible
sense. But in 14.15 (‘For, if thy brother is grieved on account of
thy food, thou walkest no longer in accordance with love’) it is love
between Christians that Paul has in mind. In 15.30, where the
phrase ‘the love of the Spirit’ means ‘the love which the Spirit
works’, the context suggests it is love between Christians that is
specially in mind; but the expression is witness to Paul’s belief that
it is the Holy Spirit who makes Christians free to love their fellow
human beings. One further point may be made here, namely, that
it ought to be recognized as highly significant that 13.1—7 has been
placed between 12.9—21 and 13.8—10, two passages concerned with
love. Was not Calvin right in saying that the fulfilment of what is
enjoined in 13.1—7 ‘constitutes not the least part of love’?? Must we
not recognize that trying seriously to fulfil our political respon-
sibility as Christians, which in a democracy is a very onerous
matter, is an important part of the love of the neighbour for which
the Holy Spirit sets us free, an important part of our sanctification?
9. But consideration of the thrice repeated ‘all’ of
Deuteronomy 6.5, a commandment Paul surely knows and accepts,
though in 13.9 he omits to quote it, because he is there concerned
with love to the neighbour; of the indication in 13.8 that the debt
of love is never fully discharged; of the ‘as thyself’? in 13.9 which
makes it clear that the love for the neighbour required of us is a
love no whit less real and sincere than the love which all of us
sinners have for ourselves; of the searching exhortations of 12.9—
21, asection which might be entitled ‘marks of love’; and of what is
said in 14.1—15.13 of the sensitiveness and gentleness, which
should characterize relations within the church, must surely lead
us to recognize how far short we fall of the love God’s law requires
of us. And, if fora moment we glance outside Romans, the portrait
of love which we find in Galatians 5.22—23 (it is surely right to

3 The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Romans and to the Thessalonians,
translated by R. Mackenzie, Edinburgh, 1961, p. 285.

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understand the last eight substantives in the list of nine not as

separate items but as depicting the characteristics of true love) must
powerfully reinforce our conclusion. It would indeed be a mightily
self-complacent Christian who could look at this portrait of the
love which is joyful, never grudging or sullen; which is marked by
peace with God, with fellow human beings and within one’s own
inner being; which is longsuffering, patient, giving others room
and time; which is kind in intention and in action; which is truly
good both in the sense of having integrity and in the sense of being
generous; which is faithful, not liable to fail or grow weary or betray
the hopes placed in it; which is gentle, not self-assertive or
aggressive, not determined to love in one’s own way even though
that way may be damaging to the person one is supposed to be
loving; which is self-controlled, truly disciplined in its unselfish-
ness and, having looked, could say, ‘Yes, this is a true portrait of
the love which my life shows’. By freeing us to try seriously to love
God and our neighbour, the Holy Spirit makes us free for
penitence, so that we may live each day and hour by the forgiveness
of sins, learning more and more fully how far short we fall of perfect
Christian love. Penitence is a distinguishing mark of all who are
being sanctified.
10. The liberation spoken of in 8.2 is the setting free of those
who have already died and been raised with Christ in God’s sight
in that he died and was raised for them, and have already died and
been raised with Christ in their baptism as the seal and pledge of
God’s gracious decision so to see them, now also to die with Christ
and be raised with him in their actual living, as they strive again
and again to die to sin and to rise to newness of life. In 6.1—-14,
probably both for the sake of brevity and also in order to bring out
the positive nature of the Christian’s obedience, Paul speaks (vv. 4
and 5) of our dying and being raised in baptism only in terms of
death and of our moral dying to sin and being raised to newness of
life only in terms of resurrection (‘So then we have been buried
together with him through baptism into /vs death, in order that, as
Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so
we also might walk in newness of life. For if we have been
. conformed to his death, we are certainly also to be conformed to his

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resurrection.’). In 8.13, however, he does use the language of dying

with reference to dying in the moral sense.
11. This setting free to die again and again to sin and to rise
again and again to newness of life is a setting free for life which is
truly called life because it is turned in the direction of obedience to
God. In the believer’s walking in newness of life, even though
falteringly, the promise of 1.17 that ‘he who is righteous by faith
shall live’ has begun to be fulfilled. But this is only a partial
fulfilment. We have yet to die with Christ in our actual death and
to be raised with him finally. The life, for which ‘the Spirit of life’
has set us free, includes both newness of life in this world and also
eternal life hereafter. That this is a constant theme of Romans can
be seen from 1.17; 2.7; 4.17; 5.17, 18, 21; 6.4, 8, 11, 13, 22, 23;
FAO; 24-25a;'8.256;10, 11,13; 11155 120h:
12. Another prominent theme of Romans is hope, the noun
éA\mic occurring thirteen times (that is, much more frequently than
in any other New Testament book) and the verb éAmiCew four
times. It is clear that, for Paul, the freedom which the life-giving
Spirit imparts is also freedom for hope. The subsection 8.17—30, in
particular, is concerned with Christian hope. The movement of
thought from sonship to heirship in v. 17 introduces the subject.
Verses 18, 19, 21 and the last part of v. 23 give an indication of
what is hoped for and of its transcendent worth. They also make it
clear that this hope is not just an individual matter, but is hope for
God’s whole creation. ‘I reckon’, says Paul, ‘that the sufferings of
the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory
which is to be revealed in us . . . the creation itself too shall be set
free from the bondage of decay into the liberty of the glory of the
children of God’; and he specifies as the object of our hope, as that
for which we wait, ‘the redemption of our bodies’. It is that which
will be the full manifestation of the adoption as God’s children,
which 1s already ours, though hidden. At the same time the
references to ‘the sufferings of the present time’ (v. 18), to the
creation’s having been subjected to vanity (v 20), to the groaning
and travailing together of the whole creation (v. 22), to the groaning
of believers (v. 23), and to the steadfast patience with which they
have to wait for what they hope for (v. 25), all point to the

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painfulness characteristic of the circumstances in which their hope

has now to be exercised. The last three verses of the subsection
express its certainty. But the subject of hope was already hinted at
in 8.10—11. And as early in the epistle as chapter 4 the Christian’s
hope is foreshadowed in the hope of Abraham, the type of the
believer, firmly hoping in God’s promise in defiance of all human
expectations (4.18), while in 5.2—5 Paul declares: ‘we exult in hope
of the glory of God. And not only so, but we even exult in
afflictions, knowing that affliction works endurance, and endurance
provedness, and provedness hope. And this hope does not put us
toshame.. .’. In 13.11-14 no word ofthe €Asic group is used, but
the passage is concerned with the Christian hope. The fact that
what the Roman Christians hope for, their final salvation at Christ’s
coming, draws ever nearer renders all the more urgent their
obligation to use the present time for obedience of life. For Paul it
is of the utmost importance that Christians should continue to
hope. So he tells them that it was in order ‘that with patient
endurance and strengthened by the comfort which the scriptures
give we might hold hope fast’ (15.4) that the scriptures were
written; and he closes the hortatory main division 12.1—15.13 with
the prayer-wish, ‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and
peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of |
the Holy Spirit’ (15.13). This last quotation and also 12.12, in
which Paul exhorts the Roman Christians to ‘rejoice in hope’, point
forward by their associating hope with joy to the subject of the
next paragraph.
13. The freedom which the Holy Spirit effects is freedom to
rejoice. With 12.12 and 15.13, just mentioned, the references to
exulting (xavyao0at) in 5.2, 3 and 11 may be compared. In 14.17
Paul defines the kingdom of God, that is, the kingdom of God in
its present reality, as ‘righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy
Spirit’. This joy, which is the Spirit’s work in the believer and
altogether different from all joys that are merely the temporary
results of the satisfaction of one’s own selfish desires, is one of the
things which attest the kingdom’s presence. It is not without
significance that in the ninefold list of Galatians 5.22—23 ‘joy’ is
“placed immediately after ‘love’.

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14. One thing which has been implicit in what has been said in
the foregoing paragraphs about Paul’s ‘has set free’ must now be
stated explicitly. It is that the liberation which the Holy Spirit
effects is liberation for fellowship with all others whom he has
begun to set free, for membership of the company of those who
believe in Jesus Christ, the community of his church. Whereas
the word for ‘church’ occurs twenty-two times in 1 Corinthians
and nine times in 2 Corinthians, it occurs only five times in
Romans, and whereas it is present in the opening verses of 1 and 2
Corinthians, Galatians and 1 Thessalonians, all five of its occur-
rences in Romans are in chapter 16. But it would be a very big
mistake to conclude that the church is relatively unimportant in
Romans. In fact, the reality and importance of the church, the
company of believers, is everywhere presupposed. Very often
Paul’s use of the first person plural reflects his consciousness of
belonging, along with those he is addressing, to a community of
faith. And, when he uses the second person plural, it is generally
apparent that he is not addressing the Roman Christians as
isolated individuals, but as members together of the church.
Paul’s hopes and fears with regard to their life as a community
and the quality of their relations one with another are vividly
reflected in 12.1—15.13, but also elsewhere in the epistle. There
can be no doubt that he thinks of the sanctification of believers
not as a sanctification of individuals in isolation but as the
sanctification of individuals within the fellowship of the church.
The liberation of which 8.2 speaks is a setting free to participate
gladly and hopefully in the common life of the community of
believers, sharing in responsibility for its common obedience to
Jesus Christ.

In conclusion four observations may be made.

(i) Itis abundantly clear that 8.2, while it is formulated only in
terms of freedom from, carries also a rich positive freedom for
significance.
(11) While the work of sanctification, the freeing of human
beings from the power of sin and death, is the work of the
Holy Spirit, the many sentences in Romans which convey

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an imperative (a variety of forms are used — see, for

example, 6.13513. 12b; 12:1 12.35 6.12.21 5e2)a prove
conclusively that Paul does not think of the believer’s part
as being that of a merely passive spectator of the Spirit’s
work. An active response is called for.
(111) Paul takes it for granted that every Christian is indwelt by
the Holy Spirit (8.9a). If we show in our lives no trace at all
of his sanctifying work, that can only mean that we are not
yet Christians (‘If someone does not possess Christ’s Spirit,
then he does not belong to Christ’ (8.9b)). If the Holy Spirit
is really at work in one’s life, there will be some evidence at
least of penitence, of awareness of one’s need of forgiveness,
both God’s and one’s neighbour’s.
(iv) While it is important to recognize that the ‘has set free’ of
8.2 certainly does not mean that the life of the believer is a
triumphant progress from victory to victory such as some
Christians are prone to imagine, it is also of the utmost
importance to recognize that we cannot thank God enough
for the fact that in the darkness of this world as we know it
the Holy Spirit never ceases to carry on his sanctifying
work. And, if God does not despise but actually values the
faltering and fumbling beginnings of being turned in the |
direction of obedience, seen in the lives of Christians, can
we ever cease from marvelling at such ineffable grace?
The above very slight contribution to the discussion of a great
theme is offered as an expression of deep indebtedness to, and
affection for, the distinguished scholar, highly valued teacher, and
faithful pastor, in whose honour this essay is published.

49
tee
1h
ll
 5

Some Comments on
Professor J. D.G. Dunn’s
Christology in the Making
With special reference to the evidence
of the Epistle to the Romans

The publication of any new book of serious scholarship on the

subject of New Testament christology is an important event.
When the book is arrestingly written and is capable of provoking
to activity even sluggish minds and compelling them to work
over afresh questions of the greatest importance, it will be no —
surprise if it stirs up a considerable flurry of reactions. Such a book
is Professor Dunn’s Christology in the Making.’ It undoubtedly
requires and deserves careful and critical attention. The resolute
application and sheer physical stamina of one who can write so
substantial a book, requiring so much hard thought and at the
same time involving the vast amount of research which the biblio-
graphy attests, in so short a time (on p. x Professor Dunn observes
that the project ‘has filled most of my research time for the past
three years’) command unbounded admiration. It is an astounding

* First published in L. D. Hurst and N. T. Wright (ed.), The Glory of Christ in

the New Testament: Studies in Christology in Memory of George Bradford Caird,
Oxford, 1987, pp. 267-80 and reprinted by permission of Oxford University
Press.

! J.D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the
Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation, London, 1980.

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G.M. ELLIOTT LIBRARY
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achievement — all the more so, as it is written with a light touch

and is free from the reek of small hours’ oil, though a great deal of
that substance must surely have been expended on it. And it does
not stand alone, but is flanked by a number of articles supporting
and supplementing it, which Professor Dunn has published in
recent years.’
To respond at all adequately to so important and already
influential a book within the space which I can take is beyond my
powers. What I shall attempt to do is first to make some general
comments, then to refer to the exegesis of passages from Romans
contained in the book, and finally to consider some features of that
epistle which seem to me to have been given too little attention in
it or to have been ignored.

I
Professor Dunn tells us that he has deliberately refrained from
attempting ‘to define “incarnation” at the outset’ because of ‘the
considerable risk that any such definition would pre-set the terms
and categories of the investigation and prevent the New Testament
authors speaking to us in their own terms’ (p. 9). Had he been
intending to consider all, or, at any rate, as much as possible, of the
evidence which could be relevant, this procedure might have been
feasible. But, since he was going to be highly selective with regard
to the evidence to be considered, the method has (so it seems to
me) a serious defect. For, though he does not give his readers a
definition of ‘incarnation’ at the outset, he must of necessity have
had a working definition of it in mind, by which to determine what
material had to be examined and what might be ignored; and a
definition, undeclared to the reader but present all the time in the
author’s mind controlling his selection of the evidence to be
considered, was surely likely to ‘pre-set the terms and categories
of the investigation and prevent the New Testament authors
speaking to us in their own terms’ (p. 9) at least as effectively as,

* E.g. ‘Was Christianity a monotheistic faith from the beginning?’, in SIT 35

(1982), pp. 303-36; ‘In defence of amethodology’, in ET.95 (1983-84), pp. 295-9.

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 SOME COMMENTS ON CHRISTOLOGY IN THE MAKING

and potentially much more damagingly than, one shared with

the reader from the start. So the working definition, by which
Professor Dunn selected his evidence, should surely have been
declared from the beginning.
Moreover, he was not concerned with a general idea of
incarnation, but was conducting ‘a historical investigation into how
and in what terms the doctrine of the incarnation first came to
expression, an endeavour to understand in its original context
the language which initially enshrined the doctrine of the incar-
nation or out of which the doctrine grew’ (p. 10). Presumably the
definite articles placed before ‘doctrine’ and ‘incarnation’ each
time the words occur in this sentence and also in the subtitle of
the book are meant to indicate that the reference is quite specifically
to the historic Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. But, if that
is so, would it not have been wise to state near the beginning
briefly but clearly that historic Christian doctrine so as to save
the readers from any doubt or confusion as to what precisely it is,
the first coming to expression of which the author is seeking to
investigate? Certainly the attempt must be made to understand
the language used for this expression ‘in its original context’ (p.
10), to ‘let the New Testament evidence speak in its own terms
and dictate its own patterns’ (p. 9), and to bear constantly in mind
the danger of our misunderstanding the original intentions of
the earliest Christian writers through reading back into what they
have said the thoughts of later times (with none of this is any
competent New Testament scholar likely to quarrel). But at the
same time we ought to recognize the possibility of our mistaking
a vision distorted by reaction against the orthodoxy of later times
for an authentic seeing with the eyes of the earliest Christians. ‘That
the omission of a brief but clear statement of the sort indicated
above has really facilitated an objective understanding of the
New Testament evidence in its own historical context seems to
us highly unlikely. Is it not more likely that it has resulted in
failure to recognize the relevance to the subject of inquiry of
some New Testament material, and so has led to the exclusion
from consideration of some things which ought to have been
“considered?

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Professor Dunn himself is well aware that the Christian

doctrine of the Incarnation cannot be properly understood except
in the context of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. He is also
conscious of the fact that an insufficiently informed and thoughtful
zeal for maintaining the doctrine of the Incarnation can betray
people into tritheism.’ Yet, while his index of subjects contains a
few references under ‘Trinitarian tendency’, such a prime Pauline
passage for the doctrine of the Trinity — and surely also for the
doctrine of the Incarnation — as 2 Corinthians 13.13 [RV: 14] does
not seem to be mentioned at all in the book. Reading Christology in
the Making \ed me to re-read once again that part of Karl Barth’s
Church Dogmatics 1/1 which is concerned with the doctrine of the
Trinity, and I cannot help wondering whether, had Professor
Dunn re-read these pages when he was engaged with his book, he
might not have been persuaded of the relevance to his subject of
some New Testament material which he has excluded from his
discussion and also encouraged to be more precise in his use of
language with regard to the pre-existence of Christ than he has
been. But there is only one reference to Barth in his index of
authors.

i
In the second place, we turn to a consideration of Professor Dunn’s
exegesis of passages in Romans. There are in all thirteen passages
of Romans, of which, according to the index of New Testament
references, some exegesis is offered; but we shall here consider only
those five of them which bear directly on the question whether or
not the doctrine of the Incarnation can be discerned in Paul’s
Epistle to the Romans.
The first is 1.3-4. On pp. 33-5 Professor Dunn is attempting
to draw out the meaning, not of these verses in their present
context, but of the pre-Pauline formula which he thinks Paul has
incorporated. While I am inclined to agree that the suggestion that
Paul is making use of an already existing formula is probable, I do

3 See ET 95 (1983-84), p. 299.

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 SOME COMMENTS ON CHRISTOLOGY IN THE MAKING

not share Professor Dunn’s confidence that we can be sure of

the sense it carried originally, not knowing its original context. I
cannot see how his statement that it is ‘clear ... that there is no
thought of a pre-existent sonship here’ (that is, in the presumed pre-
Pauline formula) can be justified. That this thought could have
been present is surely not inconceivable, particularly if ‘in power’
was part of the original formula (an alternative he admits as
possible). There are other statements in these pages which seem to
me questionable. But, as Iam now concerned with the sense of the
passage in its context in Romans, I pass on to his suggestion on pp.
138f that ‘it is possible that Paul meant [by the ‘according to the
flesh/according to the Spirit’ antithesis] that Jesus’ installation as
Son of God (in power) “according to the Spirit” was in part at least
the consequence of his having lived “according to the Spirit”.”
Paul’s xata avetuUa Gywwovvys is notoriously difficult and has
been very variously interpreted. Professor Dunn’s explanation
seems less probable than that which takes the phrase to refer to the
presence of the Hoiy Spirit, which, as resulting from Christ’s
exaltation, is the guarantee of his having been appointed Son of
God in power since his resurrection. For one thing, an inter-
pretation which understands the times to which the two phrases
HATA VEDUG GyLWOUVNS and &E AvaoTaoEWS VEXEMV refer, to |
be the same, is surely preferable to one which assumes a temporal
disjunction between them, as does Professor Dunn’s. What is most
important for our present purpose is that Professor Dunn does not
consider anywhere in Christology in the Making (as far as I can see)
the possibility that xata oOGexa is intended to limit the
application of tot yevouévou &x oméQquatocg Aavid to the
human nature which the One, who has already been described as
God’s Son at the beginning of v. 3, assumed, or, to put it in
other words, that the point of xatTa OAExa is, in fact, to indicate
that, true though it is — and it is indeed of real importance — that, as
far as his manhood is concerned, the Son of God is the
legal descendant of David, his manhood is not coextensive with

+ Cf. J. D. G. Dunn, ‘Jesus — Flesh and Spirit: an exposition of Romans 1.3—

* 4, in JTS n.s. 24 (1973), pp. 40-68.

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On ROMANS

the fullness of his person. The use of xata& OGQxa here may
be compared with its use in 9.5. While it is true that, treated as
an isolated scrap of evidence, these verses do not afford any
incontrovertible proof that the writer believed in the pre-existence
of Christ and in his incarnation, understood in their context and in
the light of the rest of Romans, they are significant support for the
view that he did so.
The second passage is 8.3. Professor Dunn’s treatment of this
key-verse is scattered over several places (in particular, pp. 44f,
111f and 126f), but there is no really thorough discussion of it.
The reference of m€upac to the sending into the world of the
pre-existent Son is not to be dismissed so lightly. It is true that the
use of éusevv (as also of E6amo0oteAEtv in Gal. 4.4) does not in
itself require such a reference; for the language of ‘sending’ is often
used in the Bible of the divine commissioning of prophets. But the
fact that the reference to the divine sending and the description of
the One sent as God’s Son (note here the specially emphatic tov
EAUTOV VLOV) are followed both here and in Galatians 4.4 by words
which are naturally understood as indicating the consequence of
the sending for the One sent, namely, that he comes to have a
human existence (in Rom. 8.3 the words €v OWOLMUATL OAEXOSG
G@Uaetias and in Gal. 4.4 the words yevouevov &% yuvatxos,
YEVOUEVOV DITO VOUOV), surely makes it very difficult to avoid the
conclusion that in both places we are up against strong evidence of
the presence of the doctrine of the Incarnation in Paul’s thought.°
But more must be said about 8.3. An obvious problem is: Why
did Paul not just say €v oaext Guaetiacs? Why did he insert év
OpoLMpatt and put the genitive 0aExd¢ instead of CaExi? This
has been much discussed and various explanations have been
offered. Professor Dunn simply assumes, without consideration of
other views, that the meaning of €v OLOLMUATL OAEXOS GUAOTIAS
is ‘in the (precise) likeness of sinful flesh’ (pp. 44 and 45) and that
Paul wanted to make ‘an affirmation of the complete oneness
of Christ with sinful man making his death effective for the

* Reference should be made to E. Schweizer, in TWNT 8, pp. 376-8 and

385f.

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 SOME COMMENTS ON CHRISTOLOGY IN THE MAKING

condemnation of sin by the destruction of its power base (the flesh)’

(p. 45). The purpose of Professor Dunn’s addition of the word
‘precise’ is not absolutely clear. Was it perhaps to indicate agree-
ment with the suggestion that OUOt@pa here means ‘form’ rather
than ‘likeness’? This suggestion can certainly be defended, but its
correctness should not be taken for granted. As a matter of fact,
much of the attention of interpreters of Romans has been directed
towards explaining why Paul should introduce the idea of likeness
here. But of this Christology in the Making gives no hint. Of the
suggestions which might have been discussed the one which still
seems to me the most probable is that Paul did it in order to take
account of the truth that God’s Son was not changed into man,
but, while assuming our fallen human nature and becoming truly
man, still remained himself. According to this suggestion, the use
of Ouoimua was intended to guard against the notion of a
‘complete oneness of Christ with sinful man’ (p. 45) in the sense of
a oneness which is so complete that there is a time when he is
fallen man without remainder — not to call in question the reality of
his true humanity, the reality of his sharing our fallen human
nature, but to draw attention to the fact that in becoming man the
Son of God never ceased to be himself.® (Here the €v OUOLMUATL
avOoanmMv yevoOuevos of Phil. 2.7 is to be compared.) Professor |
Dunn does not mention this suggestion, as far as I can see. But to
assume that Paul could not conceivably have thought in such a way
is surely to underestimate his intelligence.
The third passage is 8.9—11. Professor Dunn has some discus-
sion of these verses on pp. 144-6. He refers to ‘the familiar observa-
tion that in Romans 8.9—-11 “Spirit of God dwells in you”, “you
have the Spirit of Christ”, and “Christ is in you” are all more or
less synonymous formulations’ (p. 145). But he does not consider
the possibility that the parallelism between ‘the Spirit of God’ and

6 Professor Dunn’s ‘wholly’ in his sentence, ‘it was the first Christians’
recognition both of the reality of God in Christ and that Christ was wholly one
with them, a man among men, that determined the course of future orthodoxy’,
in SJT 35 (1982), p. 335, is to be questioned. Is there not a vital distinction
between vere and totaliter, which must not be blurred, if we are to keep to
~ Christian truth?

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On ROMANS

‘the Spirit of Christ’ in v. 9 is one more evidence of Paul’s recog-

nition of the divine dignity, and therefore of the pre-existence, of
Christ.
The fourth passage is 9.5. Professor Dunn gives it less than
half a page altogether. This is surprisingly slight treatment in view
of the fact that he himself admits ‘the very real possibility that
Romans 9.5 refers to Christ as God (9€6c)’ (p. 45). It is also marked
by an uncharacteristic looseness, which leaves the reader puzzled,
if he tries to analyse what exactly is being said. Was Professor Dunn
unhappy with this piece of evidence? One sentence states that ‘the
punctuation intended by Paul and the meaning of the doxology is
[stc] too uncertain for us to place any great weight on it’; but the
very next sentence is: “The argument on punctuation certainly
favours a reference to Christ as “god”.’ After the confusing com-
bination of ‘too uncertain’ and ‘certainly’, we are told that ‘Paul’s
style is notably irregular and a doxology to Christ as god at this
stage would be even more unusual within the context of Paul’s
thought than an unexpected twist in grammatical construction’.
But is Paul’s style so ‘notably irregular’? And is ‘an unexpected
twist in grammatical construction’ an adequate description of the
difficulty involved in taking v. 5b as an independent doxology?
Professor Dunn goes on to assert that ‘Even if Paul does bless
Christ as “god” here, the meaning of “god” remains uncertain,
particularly in view of our earlier discussion (above pp. 16f)’; but
the material gathered on pp. 16f seems to have very little in
common with Romans 9.5. The last sentence of p. 45 (‘Whatever
the correct rendering of the text it is by no means clear that Paul
thinks of Christ here as pre-existent god’) would seem to suggest
that even in Professor Dunn’s own mind there remains sufficient
doubt to make imperative a much more serious discussion of the
various arguments which have been put forward in connection with
this verse than he has given us. It is true that several recent
commentators’ have rejected the reference of v. 5b to Christ; but it
is significant that they had not had the chance to consider the
extremely careful contribution by B. M. Metzger entitled ‘The

” E.g. E. Kasemann, O. Kuss, U. Wilckens.

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 SOME COMMENTS ON CHRISTOLOGY IN THE MAKING

Punctuation of Rom. 9:5’,’ to which Professor Dunn refers but the

detailed arguments of which he makes no attempt to rebut. Other
recent commentators have given their support to the reference to
Christ,’ and — what is perhaps the most important recent develop-
ment in this debate — the editors of the Nestle-Aland Greek New
Testament, whose concern for thoroughly objective scholarship
will hardly be impugned, have in the twenty-sixth edition (1979)
substituted a comma after od4Qxa for the colon of the previous
edition. It is surely not unreasonable to suggest that at the present
time the onus probandi rests squarely on the shoulders of those who
reject the reference of v. 5b to Christ. We regard as by far the most
probable explanation of v. 5 as a whole that which understands it
to be affirming that Christ, who, in so far as his human existence is
concerned, is of Jewish race, is also Lord over all things and by
nature God blessed for ever, and therefore as strong evidence of
Paul’s belief in Christ’s pre-existence and in the Incarnation.
The fifth passage is 10.6—10, with which Professor Dunn deals
on pp. 184—7. He rejects the common interpretation of v. 6 (‘But
the righteousness which is of faith saith thus, Say not in thy heart,
Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down:)’) as
referring to the Incarnation, arguing instead that Paul is thinking
of heaven as the place where Christ is now, since his exaltation .
(‘Christ may seem far away, inaccessible to earth-bound men, but
the word of faith is near at hand’ (p. 186)). But this interpretation,
though Professor Dunn is of course not alone in maintaining it,
does seem to be too much of a tour de force. One obvious difficulty
in the way of accepting it is the order of vv. 6 and 7. The fact that
v. 7 refers explicitly to Christ’s resurrection from the dead makes
it natural to suppose that what is referred to in v. 6 is likely to be
something chronologically prior to the Resurrection. Professor
Dunn’s reply to this is that the order of the questions in vv. 6 and 7
was determined simply by Deuteronomy 30.12f. It is true that in
Romans 10.9 we get a surprising order (outward confession

8 In B. Lindars and S. S. Smalley (ed.), Christ and Spirit in the New

Testament: studies in honour of C. F. D. Moule, Cambridge, 1973, pp. 95-112.
9 E.g. H. Schlier, C. E. B. Cranfield.

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On ROMANS

mentioned before inward belief) and that the explanation of this

seems to be Deuteronomy 30.14, in which ‘in thy mouth’ precedes
‘in thy heart’. But in this case Paul immediately reverses the
order in v. 10, so that the awkwardness is straightened out: nothing
like this is done for the awkwardness presented (on Professor
Dunn’s interpretation) by the order of vv. 6 and 7. There is a
further difficulty in the way of accepting Professor Dunn’s inter-
pretation: even if we can get over the obstacle of the order, there
remains the difficulty that the parallelism between vv. 6 and 7
strongly suggests that, since what is spoken of in v. 7 has already
happened, what is spoken of in v. 6 must also be something which
has occurred already. A reference to bringing down the now exalted
Christ from heaven combines very oddly with that to bringing up
from the dead him whose resurrection is a fact of the past. The
natural interpretation of v. 6 is surely that which understands it to
refer to the Incarnation.

ill
We turn now, in the third place, to a consideration of some of the
features of Romans, the bearing of which on the subject of his
inquiry Professor Dunn does not acknowledge but which seem to
have a very strong claim to be taken into account.
Professor Dunn refrains from giving a separate treatment of
the title ‘Lord’ on the ground that ‘it denotes Christ’s exalted (i.e.
post-Easter) glory’.'? But Paul’s use of the title can hardly be
without some bearing on the question whether he believed in
Christ’s pre-existence and in the Incarnation or not. That he must
have been well acquainted both with the common secular uses of
the word xUQtoc and also with its use in pagan religions is clear.
But, if it is right to say that its use in the Septuagint (more than six
thousand times) to represent the divine name YHWH is the key to
the understanding of Paul’s use of it with reference to Christ (and
the fact that he applied to Christ, without — apparently — the least
sense of inappropriateness, the xUQLoc of Septuagint passages in

0 Pp. 271f, note 33 to chapter I.

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 SOME COMMENTS ON CHRISTOLOGY IN THE MAKING

which it is perfectly clear that the xUVetoc referred to is God

himself" would seem to be very strong support for this view), then
Paul’s use of the title with reference to Christ must surely mean
that, for him, the exalted Christ shares the name, the majesty, the
authority, the deity, of the living God himself. But a necessary
implication of this is that Paul believed in Christ’s pre-existence
and in the Incarnation. On any other assumption than this, the use
of the title xUeLoc of Christ in the way in which Paul (someone
who lived with, and, as it were, breathed, the Old Testament) used
it, would surely be incomprehensible.
Strong confirmation of what has just been said about Paul’s use
of the title ‘Lord’ of the exalted Christ is afforded by the fact that
he countenanced the offering of prayer to Christ. Evidence of this
in Romans is to be seen in 10.12—14. In each of these three verses
reference is made to ‘calling upon’ the Lord or the name of the
Lord. That the Lord referred to is Christ is clear from the context.
The Greek émtixaAeto8au (rendered here in the RV by ‘call upon’)
is a technical term for invoking in prayer.'? That Paul, who
certainly had not abandoned his commitment to the first two com-
mandments of the Decalogue (to have done so would surely have
been perceived by him as downright apostasy), could countenance
prayer to Christ is something which has often not received the
attention it deserves. Its significance cannot be neatly confined to
the subject of how Paul thought about the exalted Christ; for only
the one true living God can be rightly invoked in prayer, and, if the
exalted Christ is one to whom prayer may rightly be addressed,
then he must have been true God from all eternity. The idea of
apotheosis was acceptable to pagans of the centuries before and
after Christ, but to one who has lived in the light of the Old
Testament can it be anything but a nonsense? To grasp the full
significance of Paul’s acceptance of the rightness of praying to

! E.g. Romans 10.13: for other examples reference may be made to my ICC
commentary on Romans, pp. 529 and 839.
2 Cf. W. Bauer, Griechisch-deutsches Worterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen
Testaments, Berlin, 1971 corrected reprint of 5th ed. of 1958, s.v. €muxahEw 2.b
and see also la. Cf. Paul’s use of ‘[those] that call upon the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ’ as a designation of Christians in 1 Corinthians 1.2.

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ON ROMANS

Christ, one needs to consider Exodus 20.2—6 and Deuteronomy

5.7-10, and along with them such passages as Deuteronomy 6.4
(cf. Rom. 3.30); 11.16; Isaiah 42.8; Matthew 4.10; Mark 12.29, 32.
There is a rich variety of other ways in which Paul associates
Christ with God with an uninhibitedness, which may easily be
passed over unnoticed because it has become so familiar, but which,
as soon as we stop to reflect on the implications of what we are
reading, can hardly fail to strike us as utterly extraordinary and
astonishing. Thus in 1.7 the source from which grace and peace
are desired for the Roman Christians is ‘God our Father and the
Lord Jesus Christ’; and there is a suggestive parallel between “The
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you’, which is the subscriptio
to the letter (16.20), and the prayer-wish of 15.33, ‘Now the God
of peace be with you all. Amen’. In 8.35 and 39 ‘the love of Christ’
and ‘the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord’ are used,
respectively, in two closely corresponding contexts. The phrase
‘the churches of Christ’ in 16.16 answers to ‘the churches of God’
in | Corinthians 11.16. There is an interesting parallel between ‘the
gospel of God’ in 15.16 and ‘the gospel of Christ’ in 15.19, though
the two genitives are of different kinds, as is also the case in 1.1
(‘separated unto the gospel of God’) and 1.9 (‘whom I serve in my
spirit in the gospel of his Son’). In chapter 1 Paul makes it clear
that ‘the gospel of God’ (v. 1), for the proclamation of which he
has been set apart, is the gospel ‘concerning . . . Jesus Christ our
Lord’ (vv. 3-4), that it is God’s saving power (v. 16), and that in its
being proclaimed both the gift of a status of righteousness before
God (so I understand ‘a righteousness of God’ here) and also God’s
wrath are being revealed (vv. 17 and 18). According to 2.16, ‘God’
is going to carry out his eschatological judgment of men ‘by Jesus
Christ’.
Of special interest is the association of Christ with God in
relation to faith. There are places where faith is spoken of explicitly
as in God. So in 4.3 Paul quotes Genesis 15.6, ‘And Abraham
believed God ... (émiotevoev ... tH Oe@): that is a giving

'S On the ‘God be with’ formula reference may be made to my ICC

commentary on Romans, p. 780.

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 SOME COMMENTS ON CHRISTOLOGY IN THE MAKING

credence to God’s word, God’s promise (cf. 4.17—21). In 4.5 he

speaks of one who ‘believeth on [€ztt with the accusative] him that
justifieth the ungodly’ (that is, of course, God). And in 4.24 he
describes Christians as those ‘who believe on [again ézi with the
accusative] him that raised Jesus our Lord from the dead’. In
other places Christ is equally explicitly indicated as the object of
faith. Thus in 3.22 the righteousness referred to is defined as
being ‘through faith in Jesus Christ’, while in 3.26 God is spoken
of as justifying ‘the man that hath faith in Jesus’: in both these
places the noun slots is used with an objective genitive. [The
view that the genitives in these two verses are to be understood as
possessive (or subjective) has in recent years gained considerable
support; but see now Chapter 7 below.] The verb miotevetv is
used with éztt and the dative in 9.33 and 10.11 in the Septuagint
quotation and with ec in 10.14 (expressly in the first relative
clause: €l¢ is no doubt also to be supplied in the second question,
where OU stands for cic &xetvov od). In all three verses Paul is
thinking of Christ as the one believed in. There are also many
occurrences both of miotic and of miotevetv where no object of
faith is mentioned and yet the existence of an object of faith is
surely implied. To attempt to decide in each place whether God or
Christ would more naturally be supposed to be the unspecified
object would surely be unrealistic and inappropriate. The right
conclusion to draw, I suspect, is — and, if this is true, then it is of
the greatest importance for the subject of our inquiry — that, for
Paul, faith in God and faith in Christ are inextricably bound
together. Occurrences of stiotts to be mentioned here are in 1.5, 8,
bh) 3 2a ch yee ltd A 129 30.32 o100.8 uhdela 20; L235 (ak
my understanding of wETQOV MLOTEWGS is right), 6; 16.26; and of
muotevetv in 1.16, 3.22; 10.4; 13.11, 15.13."
Two other matters fall to be mentioned just here. The first is
that there is a close relationship between faith and hope in the
Bible, and that, though éAmic and éAstCetv occur much less

'* On the various meanings of miotic and mLoteveLv in the Pauline epistles
reference may be made to my ICC commentary on Romans, pp. 697f. See also
pages referred to in index II, under miotevetv and miotts and in Index III,
“under ‘faith’.

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On ROMANS

frequently in Romans than do miottc and muotevety, there is

perhaps enough of a hint of the possibility of discerning a similar
pattern implicit in the use of the former pair of words in the epistle
to that which we have seen in the use of the latter, to be worth
noting.
The second matter is that there is a great deal of material in the
Old Testament which makes the point that only God is the proper
object of faith or hope in the fullest and deepest senses of the words.
To put absolute faith or hope in any one or in anything but the one
true God is idolatry. Out of many passages which could be cited it
will be enough here to mention just a few (in each case indicating
the words or expressions used in the LXX for faith or hope):
Psalms 22.4, 5 [LXX: 21.5, 6]: ‘Our fathers trusted in thee: they
trusted, and thou didst deliver them . . . they trusted in thee, and
were not ashamed’ (éAmiCetw three times, twice with émt and
dative); 27 [26].13 (where the LXX has mioteVw tot idetv ta
avyaba xvelov Ev yf] Cwvtwv); 31.14 [LX X:30.15]: ‘But I trusted
in thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my God’ (€AmiCew with éxi
and accusative); 38.15 [LXX: 37.16]: ‘For in thee, O LORD, do I
hope: thou wilt answer, O LORD, my God?’ (éAmiCetv with éxt
and dative); 78 [LXX: 77].22: (God was wroth with Israel) ‘Because
they believed not in God, and trusted not in his salvation’
(mLoTEVELV Ev and éAmiCer with éxi and accusative); 118 [LXX:
117] 8, 9: ‘It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence
in man. It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in
princes’ (memovévat with émi and accusative twice in v. 8,
edmiCetv with és and accusative twice in v. 9); 146 [LXX: 145].3,
5: ‘Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom
there is no help . . . Happy is the man that hath the God of Jacob
for his help, whose hope is in the LORD his God’ (memou8évat
with €stt and accusative, and 1) éAmic avtod also with émt and
accusative); Proverbs 3.5: “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart,
and lean not upon thine own understanding’ (eivat memov8w> with
est and dative); Isaiah 7.9: ‘If ye will not believe, surely ye shall
not be established’ (mtotevetv: it is faith in God that is in
question); Jeremiah 17.5, 7: ‘Cursed is the man that trusteth in
man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from

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 SOME COMMENTS ON CHRISTOLOGY IN THE MAKING

the LORD . . . Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and
whose hope the LORD is’ (thv édmida éyew with émi and
accusative, wemouWevat with Est and dative, and édztic).
It seems to me that what is said in Romans about faith is (when
it is seen in the light of the wealth of relevant Old Testament
material of which only a few examples have been given above)
further strong evidence of the author’s conviction of Christ’s
oneness with God, and so of his eternity — and so of the author’s
belief in Christ’s pre-existence and in the Incarnation.
Yet further evidence is provided by the passages concerning
Christ’s death for us. Its full weight can be measured accurately
only when all the relevant passages are seen together,!* but 5.8 and
3.24-26 will, I think, suffice to make the point which has to be
made here. The assertion in 5.8 that God proves his own love for
us by the fact that Christ died for us while we were still sinners is
not to be explained as merely referring to a specially outstanding
instance of the general truth that a man who performs an act of
self-sacrificial love for his fellow-men affords a pointer to God’s
love and care for them. It is so solemnly and emphatically expressed
(note the emphatic €autov and the fact that the subject of the
action described in the main clause is God), besides being an
integral part of a context dealing with our reconciliation (that is, of .
God’s transforming us from being his enemies into being his
friends), that it surely cannot be convincingly explained as
implying anything less than that Paul believed that in Christ’s
giving himself in death God was himself involved not just in
sympathy but in person. A clue to the right understanding of the
other passage is, I believe, afforded by the recognition that the xat
in 3.26 is adverbial, that is, that it means not ‘and’ but ‘even’, so
that the latter half of the verse may be translated ‘so that he might
be righteous even in justifying the man who believes in Jesus’. Paul
is indicating that God’s object was to justify sinners, who put their
trust in Jesus, righteously, that is, in a way altogether worthy of
himself as the merciful and loving God, who, because he truly and
faithfully loves men, cannot condone their sin or allow it to appear

'S For a list of these see ICC Romans, pp. 826-33.

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On ROMANS

as other than it is. In order so to forgive, without cruelly betraying

his whole creation by compromising his own righteousness, God
purposed that Christ should be a propitiatory sacrifice (3.25), that
is, surely, purposed to direct against his own very self in his Son
the full weight of that righteous wrath which men deserve. If — and
only if — Jesus Christ is essentially one with the eternal God (and
this carries with it pre-existence and incarnation), this passage
makes sense, sense consonant with the character of God disclosed
in Scripture.
In the light of what has just been said, must we not conclude
that, when he refers to Christ as ‘Son of God?’ in 1.4, ‘his [that is,
God’s] Son’ in 1.3, 9; 5.10; 8.29, ‘his [that is, God’s] own [Eautod]
Son’ in 8.3, ‘his [that is, God’s] own [t6tov] Son’ in 8.32, and to
God as ‘the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’ in 15.6 (cf.
‘the Father’ in 6.4), Paul intends to indicate a relationship which
involves a real community of nature between Christ and God? The
EavtTOD and tdtov in 8.3 and 32, respectively, seem to be used to
underline the contrast between the one true Son of God by nature
and the sons by adoption.
But the evidence of Romans seems to take us still farther. There
are a number of short passages each containing a combination of
references to God (the Father), to Christ, to the Spirit, in close
proximity to each other, which, taken together, seem to me to
constitute a very strong basis for the affirmation that, though no
explicit formulation of a doctrine of the Trinity is to be seen in the
epistle, the theology of the author of Romans is essentially
Trinitarian. The following must be set out:!°
(i) 1.14 (‘Paul, slave of Christ Jesus, . . . set apart for the work
of proclaiming God’s message of good news, which he
promised beforehand ..., concerning his Son, who was
born of David’s seed according to the flesh, who was
appointed Son of God in power according to the Spirit of
holiness from the resurrection of the dead, even Jesus
Christ our Lord’).

'6 [ quote these passages according to the translation in my ICC commentary,

by permission of T. & T. Clark.

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 SOME COMMENTS ON CHRISTOLOGY IN THE MAKING

(ii) 5.1—5 (‘. . . we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ, . . . we exult in hope of the glory of God... And
this hope does not put us to shame, for God’s love has been
poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has
been given to us’).
(iii) 8.14 (‘So then there is now no condemnation for those
who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has
in Christ Jesus set thee free from the law of sin and of death.
For God, having sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh and to deal with sin, condemned sin in the flesh. . . ,
so that the righteous requirement of the law might be
fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but
according to the Spirit’).
(iv) 8.9 (‘But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, seeing
that God’s Spirit dwells in you. (If someone does not
possess Christ’s Spirit, then he does not belong to
Christ)’).
(v 8.11 (‘But, if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the
—

dead dwells in you, he who raised from the dead Christ

Jesus shall quicken your mortal bodies also through his
Spirit who dwells in you’).
(vi) 8.16f (“The Spirit himself assures our spirit that we are |
children of God. And if children, then also heirs: heirs of
God and fellow heirs of Christ, seeing that we are now
suffering with him, in order that we may hereafter be
glorified with him’).
(vii) 14.17f (‘For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking,
but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit; for
he who therein serves Christ is well-pleasing to God and
deserves men’s approval’).
(viii) 15.16 (‘to be a minister of Christ Jesus unto the Gentiles,
serving God’s message of good news with a holy service, in
order that the offering consisting of the Gentiles may be
acceptable, having been sanctified by the Holy Spirit’).
(ix) 15.30 (‘I exhort you [, brothers] by our Lord Jesus Christ
and by the love of the Spirit to join earnestly with me in
prayers on my behalf to God’).

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But more significant than the simple fact that passages occur in
which God, Christ and the Spirit are mentioned together, is what
is ascribed (whether explicitly or implicitly) to Christ and to the
Spirit not only in these passages but also in many other places
throughout the epistle. It seems to me that Paul is thinking of
Christ and the Spirit as effecting (for example, in justification and
sanctification) what only the one true God himself can be seriously
thought of as effecting — things, which, if they are not done by the
eternal God himself (and none other), are just not done at all. If
this reading of Romans is correct, then the whole structure of
theological thought which has shaped and ordered it must surely
be acknowledged to have a Trinitarian character.

The conclusion to be drawn from the evidence of Romans is surely,

pace Professor Dunn, that its author firmly believed in the pre-
existence of Christ, in the sense that as Son of God he has shared
the divine life from all eternity, and in the Incarnation, in the sense
that at a particular time the eternal Son of God assumed our human
nature for the sake of humankind and of the whole creation. My
impression is that the author of Christology in the Making — for all
the valuable provocativeness of the contribution he has made,
which is gratefully acknowledged — has not yet got the measure of
the sheer intellectual power and alertness of the author of the
Epistle to the Romans.
It is with painful awareness of their inadequacy for the purpose
that the writer of these comments offers them as an expression of
his gratitude to, and affection for, the distinguished scholar, to
whose memory this essay is dedicated.

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 6

Preaching on Romans

The practice of preaching through biblical books section by

section, in order, can be, I have long believed, if followed intelli-
gently and sensitively, enormously beneficial to the church. The
purpose of this essay is to make some suggestions on how it might
be followed with the Epistle to the Romans, the book which Luther
wanted all Christians to learn by heart. The careful structure of
Romans makes continuous exposition particularly appropriate and
rewarding.
It is clear that even a very long series of sermons would not
exhaust the riches of Romans. But I think it is a reasonable thing to
attempt to expound it in twenty-four sermons of not more than -
half an hour (a series of thirty-two sermons, which is what John
Chrysostom gave on Romans, is probably rather long for an
ordinary congregation). One would obviously be able to come back
again at a later stage. It is probably, in most circumstances, not
feasible to involve both morning and evening services in such a
series. One substantial break would seem to be desirable, and, since
Romans 1-8 and 9-16 need about the same length of treatment
(Chrysostom, for example, preached sixteen sermons on 1-8 and
sixteen on 9-16), the natural place for it would seem to be between
8.39 and 9.1. Maybe two or three short breaks would also help; but
one should particularly avoid having such a break within Romans
9-11, and, I think, also Romans 6-8.
* First published in The Expository Times 99 (1987-88), pp. 36-40. This
article was based on a lecture given in New College, Edinburgh, on 5 November
1986, at the invitation of ProfessorJ.C. ONeill.

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I suggest a division of the epistle as follows: (1) 1.1—7; (2) 1.8-

16a; (3) 1.16b—17; (4) 1.18-32; (5) 2.1-3.20; (6) 3.21—26; (7) 3.27—
4.25; (8) 5.1-21; (9) 6.1-23; (10) 7.1-25; (11) 8.1—16; (12) 8.17—39;
(13) 9.1-29; (14) 9.30-10.21; (15) 11.1-36; (16) 12.1—2; (17) 12.3—
8; (18) 12.9-21; (19) 13.1—7; (20) 13.8-10; (21) 13.11—14; (22) 14.1—
15.13; (23) 15.14-33; (24) 16.1-27. I can only offer suggestions
about a few of these sections here,' but I hope it may possibly be
enough to encourage some readers who have to make sermons
every week.
In the first sermon one could take two or three minutes to
indicate by way of introduction the occasion and date of the epistle,
where St Paul was, and his use of the opening formula of a Greek
or Latin letter. After that I would concentrate on just three fairly
straightforward points. First, Paul describes, defines, both himself
(vv. 1-6) and those whom he is addressing (v. 7a) by reference to
the gospel. The really important thing about himself and about
them is, in Paul’s view, the truth which the gospel declares. Do we
so understand ourselves and our fellow human beings? And are we
beginning to live as people who have this understanding? Secondly,
what Paul desires for the Christians in Rome is grace and peace.
What does he mean by those two words? As he uses them they sum
up the gift of God in Christ. Do we desire for ourselves and those
whom we love this grace and this peace above all things? Thirdly,
what Paul thought about Jesus is indicated by the fact that he
associated the Lord Jesus Christ with God our Father in this
striking way as the source from which he looked for this grace and
peace. (Verse 7b gives us a lead with regard to the interpretation of
the difficult vv. 3 and 4. How deeply one should go into them
would depend on the congregation.)
In (2), 1.8—16a, the fact that Paul is humble enough to expect to
receive as well as to give (v. 12) is a vitally important word for
ministers and congregations alike about the true nature of pastoral
care in the church of Christ, a reminder that it is meant to be the

' [have tried to expound the epistle in A Critical and Exegetical Commentary
on the Epistle to the Romans, Edinburgh, 1, °1987; 2 +1986, and (without use of
Greek) Romans: a Shorter Commentary, Edinburgh, 71986.

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mutual consolation of brothers and sisters, a truth very often

ignored to the grievous impoverishment and weakening of the
church. Paul regards himself as a debtor to the Gentiles (v. 14), not
as having received some benefit from them, but as having been
appointed by God to do something for them. We owe to our fellow
human beings as a debt that which God has commanded us to be
or do for them or to give to them. Paul’s ‘For I am not ashamed of
the gospel’ reflects his recognition of the fact that the gospel is
something of which, in this world, Christians will always be
tempted to be ashamed. Alas for the Christian who has not learned
to reckon with this fact! Indeed the business of living the Christian
life is to a very large extent that of resisting the temptation to be
ashamed of the gospel, which is always with us, because of the
world’s hostility to Christ and because in the town called Vanity
and its ancient fair the gospel seems so weak and vulnerable and
poor, so altogether unimpressive. And it is well to remember that
there is a very wide variety of ways in which one can be ashamed of
the gospel.
(3), 1.16b—17, states the theme of what is to follow and is of
fundamental importance for the understanding of the whole
epistle. Here it will be particularly important for the intending
preacher to work at his commentaries conscientiously and.
intelligently, and not be content till the direct relevance of this
verse-and-a-half to himself and his congregation becomes luminous
for him.
In (4), 1.18-32, the reference to God’s wrath is lable to
offend. But ordinary people can usually see that a good man will
react to cruelty, injustice, falsehood, with indignation. Our human
‘righteous indignation’ is always sadly compromised. God’s wrath
is an expression of his love. He is wroth with our sinfulness
precisely because he loves us truly and seriously and faithfully.
His wrath is being revealed now in the preaching because it
was revealed in the cross. The last part of v. 18 is a remarkably
illuminating definition of sin. Sin is always an assault on God’s
truth, an attempt to conceal, suppress, obliterate the reality of God
as Creator, Redeemer and Judge, an attempt which is bound to
' prove futile.

7)
On ROMANS

To give four sermons to chapter 1 may seem over-generous,

but in expounding a book one often does need to allow more time
for the early part — afterwards one can take some things for granted
as having already been explained. (5), 2.1—3.20, is an awful lot for
one sermon and calls for rather different treatment from that which
is appropriate for a shorter text. Its function in the argument is
clear enough. 1.18—32 has spoken of the judgment pronounced by
the gospel on humankind as a whole: the purpose of 2.1—3.20 is to
make it clear that the Jews, who might think themselves exempt
from God’s judgment, are in fact no exception. They too are
sinners. But the points made against the Jews of Paul’s day in the
four paragraphs, 2.1—-11, 12-16, 17-24 and 25-29, can all be
applied mutatis mutandis to Christians. We need to hear in them
warnings not to store up judgment for ourselves by judging others
self-righteously, not to imagine that merely knowing the will of
God is in itself security, not to close our eyes to the shameful
inconsistencies in our own lives, not to cherish a wrong sort of
reliance on the fact of our membership of the church. In the flow of
2.1-3.20 the eight verses 3.1—8 are parenthetic, the first four of
them guarding against a possible misunderstanding of what Paul
has been saying as implying that the Jew has no advantage at all
and that there is no profit at all in circumcision. That would be a
serious misunderstanding, and, against it, Paul has to insist that
man’s unfaithfulness does not annul God’s faithfulness to his word.
Verses 5—8 are then a kind of parenthesis within a parenthesis,
guarding against a possible misunderstanding of vv. 1—4. With v. 9
we are back to the main thrust of the section, the demonstration
that all human beings are sinners (Jesus alone excepted) and there
is no question of anyone’s being righteous before God except only
by faith.
It would be important to make it clear that what Paul is seeking
to establish in (5), far from being just a matter of intellectual
theological correctness, has a direct bearing on the attitudes of
Christians to God, to their neighbours and to themselves, and so
on the whole of their daily living. The Christian who forgets that
he is among his fellow human beings as a fellow-sinner who can
have no righteous status before God otherwise than by God’s

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utterly undeserved mercy, will certainly not live a truly Christian

life. Mr Bradshaw in Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel Ruth is a memorable
example of what happens — a Victorian example, but he has plenty
of late twentieth-century equivalents.
(6), 3.21—26, is, I believe, the heart of the whole epistle. There
would be no gift of a righteous status before God revealed and
made available in the preaching of the gospel, had not that gift
been once for all revealed and made available in the gospel events
themselves. These verses look back to those events. The text falls
naturally into three parts: vv. 21-23, 24 and 25-26.
In the first part the initial ‘But now’ points to the decisiveness
of what was accomplished in the gospel events, emphasizing the
contrast between the situation before and the situation after those
events. Both in v. 21 and in v. 22 ‘righteousness’ denotes the
status of righteousness before God given by God. It has been
manifested ‘apart from the law’ in the sense that it has not been
earned by human obedience to the law; but it is attested ‘by the
law and the prophets’. It has to be accepted as a gift ‘through faith
in Jesus Christ’, and it is for all who will believe, without
distinction. ;
In the second part (v. 24) ‘freely’ and ‘by his grace’ support
each other, the latter phrase pointing to the source of human.
beings’ justification in the undeserved mercy of God. Whether the
thought of a ransom price was present in Paul’s mind when he
used the word ‘redemption’ is not certain. What is certain is that
his language implies that the believer’s righteous status has been
brought about by a definite and altogether decisive action by God.
What emerges here is that the centre, the heart, of the gospel is a
particular deed of God accomplished once for all in Christ on
behalf of humanity (and indeed of God’s whole creation), some-
thing objective, independent of us human beings who make up the
church, and of our feelings, our comprehension, our aspirations,
our deserts. Too often our church life and our church services give
a quite different impression — that our religion is a subjective
matter, concerned with our feelings and vague aspirations and the
transient tastes and sensations of the moment more than with the
~ living God’s saving deed and all that follows from it. This verse

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seems to me to point the way to the real renewal of our worship

and our church life.
The third part of this text (vv. 25—26) is saying, if Iunderstand
it aright, that God, because in his mercy he willed to forgive sinners
and because, being truly merciful, he willed to forgive them
righteously, that is, without in any way condoning their sin,
purposed to take upon himself in the person of his Son the full
weight of that righteous, holy wrath which they would deserve. It
would be for sinners to appropriate the precious benefit of that
costly divine act by faith, accepting it trustingly, humbly,
gratefully. In vv. 25 and 26 ‘righteousness’ refers to God’s own
moral righteousness, and similarly the adjective ‘just’? (RV) in v.
26. God’s righteousness, laid open to question by his passing over
of sins in his forbearance, was to be proved by the cross. The latter
part of v. 26 affords a most precious insight into the meaning of the
cross, as Paul understood it. If we recognize that the Greek word
kai, which can mean either ‘and’ or ‘even’, is here used in the sense
‘even’ (‘that he might be righteous even in justifying the man who
believes in Jesus’), the significance of the clause stands out more
sharply; but, if we insist on the translation ‘and’, the sense of the
half-verse must still be the same, though less clearly expressed:
namely, that God might justify righteously, without compromising
his own righteousness, the sinner who trusts in Jesus. The cross is
about real, serious, costly forgiveness. God does not cruelly insult
his creature man with a cheap forgiveness denying the seriousness
of sin. To have done that would have been to violate his goodness
and abandon his love.
The experience which perhaps more than any other illuminated
this for me was a visit to a German prisoner of war camp in London
in the afternoon of Boxing Day 1945. That afternoon I went to a
special camp known as the London Prisoner of War ‘Cage’, hoping
to hold a service for Christmas; but the commandant explained
that the current inmates could not be allowed to mix together, as
they were all either people suspected of being war criminals or else
people needed as witnesses in connection with war crimes, but
that he would send round to each room to inquire who would like
to be visited by a British Protestant army chaplain. So I spent my

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afternoon visiting the different rooms, not knowing who was a

suspected perpetrator of a war crime and who was merely a witness
to such a crime, and praying with those I visited. It was an
experience which made Romans 3.25—26 live for me.
In preparing to preach on (9), 6.1—23, (10), 7.1—25, (11), 8.1-
16, and (12), 8.17—39, it will be helpful to consider the three
chapters together; for, taken closely together, they give a balanced
and profound account of sanctification, whereas, understood in
isolation from one another, they can be seriously misleading. In
6.123 Paul seems to presuppose a degree of theological sophis-
tication in the Roman Christians which one could not take for
granted in an average congregation. He assumes, apparently, some
awareness on their part of one at least of the four senses of the
believer’s dying with Christ and being raised with him and a
readiness to reckon with the rest of them. This fourfold dying and
being raised with Christ is implicit throughout the chapter as the
basis of the believer’s obedience. We died and were raised with
Christ in his death and resurrection in the sense that God has
decided to regard his death and resurrection as ‘for us’; we died
and were raised with Christ in our baptism, because it was the
pledge and seal given to us as individuals of that divine decision
about us; we are obliged therefore to seek to die daily and hourly to.
sin and to allow ourselves daily and hourly to be raised up to
newness of life; one day we shall die finally to sin in our dying and
at the last we shall share in the resurrection of the dead. Such is the
basis of the summons in vv. 12-14 to the ‘glorious revolution’ of
the Christian life, the revolt against sin’s usurping rule in the name
of our rightful ruler, God.
Of Paul’s awareness of the seriousness and the costliness of the
conflict which that revolt involves and of his frank recognition of
the fact that in this life it is never finished the latter part of Romans
7 is proof, if the view of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin and
many others that it refers to the Christian life (not the pre-
conversion life) is accepted, as it surely should be. Thus under-
stood vv. 14—25 bar the way to a complacent, triumphalistic
interpretation of Romans 8, into which those who have taken the
~ other view of 7.14ff have often fallen.

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(11), 8.1-16, tells of the work of the Holy Spirit in the

sanctification of believers. It is a work of liberation. The Holy
Spirit, having begun to set us free by enabling us to put our trust
in Christ, continues that work in us by giving us more and more
freedom from ourselves, from the false god Ego, and for God and
our neighbour. Sanctification means the growing freedom to obey
God. It cannot be too much stressed that (11) does not point to any
spectacular and exciting releases of pent-up religious or other
emotions, to any exuberance of self-expression or even to what are
elsewhere in the New Testament called ‘mighty works’, as the
proof of the indwelling of God’s Spirit, but, with sobering
emphasis, to the fulfilment in the lives of those who walk according
to the Spirit of the righteous requirement of the law. Sanctification
is the fulfilment of the promise in Jeremiah 31.33 that God would
put his law in his people’s inward parts and write it on their hearts,
that is, create in them a glad and free commitment to it, a
wholehearted desire to obey it.
When in v. 15, Paul wants to sum up what fulfilling the
righteous requirement of the law means, he speaks simply of calling
God ‘Father’; for to address the real God as ‘Father’, not casually,
unthinkingly or hypocritically, but intelligently, responsibly,
seriously, sincerely, carries with it everything the law requires. The
freedom which the Spirit creates and sustains and increases is
freedom to live as God’s child.
And this life as God’s child is, according to (12), 8.17—39, a life
characterized by hope; for the children are also heirs looking
forward to an inheritance. But this hope is no narrow, self-centred
hope, but a generous, God-centred hope, which includes hope for
all the creation (8.19—22). Its absolute certainty is underlined with
striking eloquence in vv. 31-39.
(13), 9.1-29, (14), 9.30-10.21, (15), 11.1-36, are obviously
important but also specially difficult. They need to be understood
together. Paul’s discussion of the problem of Israel’s rejection of
Christ should be heard to the end before one attempts to form an
opinion about it. In a world in which the memory of the Holocaust
is still for many fearfully vivid, in which fresh examples of crude
and blatant antisemitism are quite often reported, in which

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unconscious prejudice is often insidiously at work, and in which,

on the other hand, sympathy with the Jews in their past sufferings
and a sense of guilt in connection with them are liable to express
themselves in an uncritical support for the state of Israel which
takes little or no account of the wrongs suffered by the Palestinians,
the obligation on Christians to listen attentively to what these
chapters have to say is surely unavoidable. It will be a strenuous
adventure.
(19), 13.1—7, is also specially difficult, and congregations need
help with it. The key to a right understanding is the realization
that the Greek verb represented by AV ‘be subject’, RV ‘be in
subjection’ is not equivalent to ‘obey’. In ordinary English to obey
someone is to do what that person commands. In Greek there are
three very obvious verbs, all used in the New Testament, which
convey this meaning. But Paul used another verb here. I think we
can assume that he did so deliberately, because he thought it more
suitable. It was not his intention to put a blank cheque in the hands
of all civil rulers and authorities, laying on Christians the obligation
to do whatever such authorities might command. And the Bible
Societies and others who have used ‘Obedience to Rulers’ as a
heading for this section have done a very serious — though no doubt
unintentional — disservice to the church and to the cause of truth.
The verb Paul uses here is used in Ephesians 5.21 of a reciprocal
obligation (‘subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of
Christ’). Obedience in the ordinary sense of the English word can
hardly be reciprocal. What the Greek verb denotes is the
recognition that another has a claim on one that takes precedence
over one’s own claim on oneself. To subject oneself to one’s
fellow-Christian is to recognize that his claim on one is superior to
one’s own claim on oneself, so to put his true interests before one’s
own. In exhorting the Roman Christians to be subject to the civil
authorities Paul is reminding them that, as Christians, they have
an inescapable obligation to the state, an inescapable political
responsibility, laid on them by God, to be fulfilled conscientiously.
The content of that obligation for Christians in the Roman empire
of the first century has to be understood from the rest of what Paul
says here and from other material in the New Testament. The

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Christian who lives in late twentieth-century Britain has to

translate this into the terms of the very different conditions of a
democratic state. Since he has much more power to influence
events, for him to fail to use that power or to use it unintelligently,
irresponsibly or selfishly would be — in the phraseology of v. 2 — to
withstand the ordinance of God. For example, to fail to try as hard
as one can to be as fully and reliably informed about political issues
as possible would be to withstand God’s ordinance. That the
church in Britain needs to hear sermons on Romans 13.1-—7 is very
clear; but it is important to realize that this passage is liable to be
seriously and indeed disastrously misunderstood.
(20), 13.8-10 (on the debt which must constantly be paid but
can never be discharged) is relatively easy to expound, though so
difficult to heed. And (21), 13.11—14, is surely a text which cries
out to be preached on, once one has escaped the mire of the
notorious delay-of-the-Parousia problem.
One sermon for the whole of (22), 14.1-15.13, may seem
absurd. But I think it is true to say that there is one main point that
Paul is trying to make in this passage and therefore it makes sense
(in a series of only twenty-four sermons on Romans) to concentrate
on bringing out as clearly as possible that main point in its
relevance to the church today. It is not at all easy to determine
precisely what was at issue between the ‘weak’ and the ‘strong’,
and different explanations are offered. My guess is that the weak
were Christians (mainly Jewish Christians presumably) who, while
(unlike the Judaizers to whom Galatians refers) neither thinking
they were putting God in their debt by their observance nor
wanting to force all Christians to conform to their way, yet felt
strongly that, as far as they themselves were concerned, they could
not give up the observance of the ceremonial requirements of the
Old Testament law with a clear conscience. The strong, on the
other side, were Christians who had recognized that now that he,
who is the very substance of the law, the One to whom all along its
ceremonies had been pointing, has come, it is no longer necessary
to obey the ceremonial requirements literally. Paul himself agreed
with the position of the strong (in 15.1 he counts himself among
them — ‘we that are strong’), while disapproving of the lack of

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sensitivity towards the weak which many of them displayed. He

recognized the special vulnerability of the weak. If they were driven
by ridicule or other social pressure in the church to act in violation
of what they strongly (even if in a not very well-thought-through
manner) believed to be for them the right expression of their faith
in Christ, they would be grieved and damaged in their inmost life,
their very integrity as human beings would be destroyed. So Paul’s
exhortation in this part of his letter was directed mainly towards
the strong, to try to persuade them to be ready, for the sake of their
weak brothers’ welfare, to forgo the outward expression of their
inward liberty, good though it was in itself — though he also warns
the weak against being censorious of the strong.
There is probably no situation in the church today exactly
analogous to that which Paul was addressing, and it would be a
rash man who would claim to know for certain the exact nature of
the situation addressed by Paul. But the essential message in this
passage is, I think, clear enough; and my impression is that it is a
message which the church of today sorely needs to hear and to
heed. Paul insists on the seriousness of causing a brother or sister
for whom Christ died to stumble, that is, of putting at risk or
destroying his or her existence as a believer. Of the many issues
over which Christians today are divided, both between and within
the various denominations, there are certainly some with regard to
which the consciences of individual Christians are very deeply
involved. Where that is so, the danger is often very great that those
who are in the majority will fail to show proper respect for the
consciences of their brothers and sisters who are in the minority.
The church today in Britain and elsewhere surely needs to listen
hard to this passage, lest in our arrogance and thoughtless
selfishness we treat as cheap what was bought by Christ at great
cost.
(24), 16.1-27, seems at first sight very barren, consisting largely
of names, many of them unfamiliar. But that first impression would
be wrong. Here we get a glimpse of Phoebe, a deacon (the
discriminatory term ‘deaconess’ had not yet appeared!) of the
church in Cenchreae, and of that ecclesiastical office, which later
“generations (even in the Reformed churches) have so sadly

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diminished, tending to be more concerned about power than about

service. We get a glimpse of the Christians in Rome, meeting
apparently in a number of different groups in private houses. There
is a warning in vv. 17—20, which an ordinary modern congregation
can profitably ponder, and the doxology of vv. 25-27, though
hardly of Paul’s composition, can still illumine and edify. But the
most surprising thing, especially to any one who knows something
about the position of women in Judaism and in the Graeco-Roman
world of the first century, is the prominence of women in this
chapter. There is Phoebe who is to bear Paul’s letter to Rome and
deliver it to the Christians there. And in the list of greetings in vv.
3-15, a long list because Paul wanted to establish as many points of
contact as possible in the great city which he had not yet visited, of
the twenty-six individuals specified (twenty-four named and two
otherwise identified, namely, Rufus’s mother and Nereus’s sister)
seventeen are male and nine female, according to the AV. (I
mention the AV, because it rightly takes Jounian in v. 7 to be the
accusative of the feminine name Junia, whereas the RV and various
other more recent translations and many commentators have
treated it as the accusative of a supposed masculine name Junias,
which is not otherwise known, on the ground that a female apostle
is unthinkable.) Nine out of twenty-six is something over 33.3%,
which it is interesting to compare with the percentage of members
of an average General Assembly or General Synod who are women.
Notable also are the use of the verb ‘labour’ three times with
reference to particular women (Paul uses it elsewhere of his own
apostolic labours), the description of Junia in v. 7 as outstanding
among the apostles and the fact that Prisca is mentioned before her
husband in v. 3. Here too there is something for the church of
today to heed.

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 ii

On the ITtotic Xouotot

Question

The revival of the suggestion that Inoot Xetotot in Romans

3.22 and similar genitives in v. 26; Galatians 2.16a, 16b, 20; 3.22
and Philippians 3.9 should be understood as subjective rather than
objective has gathered pace in the course of the last twenty years.!
The Greek word ztlotic can mean ‘faith’ in the sense of belief,
trust; it can also mean ‘faithfulness’. Some supporters of the
subjective genitive interpretation have favoured the former, and
some the latter, as its meaning in the phrases under consideration,
while others seem to have hesitated between the two or thought to
combine them, using such expressions as ‘Christ’s own faith/
faithfulness’. It may be said at once that neither ‘the faith of Christ’
nor ‘the faithfulness of Christ’ can be simply ruled out as incom-
patible with the thinking of the early church as it is reflected in the
New Testament. That he who had taught his disciples about
prayer, teaching them to address God as ‘Father’ and to trust his
fatherly care of them, and who had himself spent long periods in
prayer, had faith in God may well have seemed obvious. And, as to

' See, e.g., L. T. Johnson, ‘Rom 3.21—26 and the Faith of Jesus’ in CBQ 44
(1982), pp. 77-90; R. B. Hays, The Faith of Fesus Christ: an investigation of the
narrative substructure of Galatians 3:1—4:11, Chicago, 1983; S. K. Williams,
‘Again Pistis Christou’, in CBQ49 (1987), pp. 431-47; M. D. Hooker, TIIZTTZ
XPIZTOY, in NTS 35 (1989), pp. 321-42 (republished in her From Adam to
Christ: essays on Paul, Cambridge, 1990, pp. 165-86); B. W. Longenecker,
‘TItotus in Rom. 3.25: neglected evidence for the “Faithfulness of Christ”?’, in
_ NTS 39 (1993), pp. 478-80; I. G. Wallis, The Faith of Jesus Christ in early
Christian Traditions, Cambridge, 1995.

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his faithfulness, it would be easy to cite New Testament passages

which attest his having been faithful to God, to his mission from
God, to his own people Israel, to sinful humanity generally, and
also his continuing faithfulness as our High Priest, as well as his
being the expression of God’s own faithfulness. The question we
are now concerned with is whether in the occurrences of mlotic
which have been listed Paul had in mind either of these things.
I want first to take up a hint dropped by Joseph A. Fitzmyer in
his fine Romans commentary of 1993.” He asks the question, ‘Does
the vb. pisteuein ever have Christ as the subject in the NT?’ He
does not follow this up — perhaps because he judged that his
case was convincing enough without this further piece of evidence.
But his question is pertinent. According to the ‘Haufigkeitsindex’
in Kurt Aland’s Vollstandige Konkordanz zum griechischen Neuen
Testament, Band II,’ p. 407, mtotevetv ties with miotic (by a
curious coincidence both words occur the same number of times)
and wéyac as the sixty-fifth most common word in the New
Testament. It occurs 243 times. Unless one accepts the not very
likely suggestion that in Mark 9.23 t@ mLoteVovtt refers to Jesus,
there are only two occurrences where Jesus is the subject of the
verb. One is John 2.24, where the verb is transitive and does not
denote faith (‘But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that
he knew all men’); the other is 1 Timothy 3.16, where it is used in
the passive voice (Og ... émtotevOn Ev xOOU). It has been
suggested that in 2 Corinthians 4.13 Paul, in quoting LXX Psalm
115.1 [English versions: 116.10], was thinking of the psalm as
messianic, and that there is here a reference to Jesus’ faith;* but we
can scarcely claim that émiotevoa here is an occurrence of the
verb with Jesus as the subject. In at least 239 of the 243 occurrences

?J. A. Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and

Commentary, New York, 1993, p. 345. J. D. G. Dunn, ‘Once More TIL=TI=
XPIZTOY’, in E. H. Lovering (ed.), Society of Biblical Literature 1991 Seminar
Papers, Atlanta, 1991, p. 732, n. 12, had already noted ‘the absence of the verbal
equivalent ..., i.e. “Christ believed”’.
3 Berlin, New York, 1978.
* A. T. Hanson, Jesus Christ and the Old Testament, London, 1965, pp. 145-7,
followed by Hooker, From Adam to Christ, pp. 178-9.

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 ON THE IItotig Xetotot QUESTION

of uLotevetv there is no question at all of Jesus’ being the

subject of the verb. And of the forty-two occurrences of this
verb in the seven epistles generally agreed to be by Paul (Romans,
1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and
Philemon) 2 Corinthians 4.13 is the only one where Jesus’ being
the subject of the verb is remotely possible. In the absence of any
clear statement that Jesus ‘believed’, ‘had faith’, it is surely difficult
to accept that Jesus’ faith was as important for Paul or for the early
church generally as some recent writers have maintained. The
above statistical evidence, while by itself not a conclusive disproof
of the explanation of the miotis XQuotOd passages as referring to
Jesus’ faith, is surely, at the least, an extremely large question mark
placed against it.
We may also note at this point that of the eighty-four
occurrences of stLotic in the seven epistles, that is, of those which
are left when the seven with which we are specially concerned have
been excluded, there is none in which there is a clear reference
either to the faith or to the faithfulness of Christ, while in none of
the remaining 152 instances of mlotis in the New Testament is the
reference clearly to Christ’s own faith or faithfulness, though the
possibility that a reference to it is implicit in Hebrews 12.2 may be
mentioned. With regard to mtot0c the position is that it occurs
nine times in the seven epistles. In one instance (1 Thess. 5.24) the
reference is possibly to Christ but more probably to God. In the
rest of the New Testament it occurs fifty-eight times; and in 2
Thessalonians 3.3; 2 Timothy 2.13; Hebrews 2.17; 3.2, 5/6;
Revelation 1.5; 3.14 and 19.11 the reference is to Christ. Where
the reference is to Christ the word is used in its sense of ‘faithful’.
The foregoing statistics, while they suggest that in the New
Testament apart from the mtoti¢ XeEuotot passages there is
slightly more evidence of interest in the thought of the faithfulness
of Christ than in the thought of his faith, suggest very strongly that
neither the thought of Jesus’ faithfulness nor the thought of his
faith was prominent in the thinking of the first-century church.
When we set over against the absence of clear references to Jesus’
mtiotic or to his m1otevetv and the paucity of references to his
“faithfulness such unambiguous references to faith in Christ as

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John 3.16; 6.40; 14.1, 12; Acts 16.31; 19.4; Romans 10.11, 14;
Galatians 2.16 (fwwets Eig XEuotov "Inootv éemiotevoaper);
Ephesians 1.15; Philippians 1.29; Colossians 1.4; 2.5; 1 Peter 1.8; 1
John 5.10, 13, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the evidence
so far considered is overwhelmingly in favour of accepting the
objective genitive interpretation of the mlotig XQuotOv passages.
In what follows I shall pay special attention to Ian G. Wallis,
The Faith ofFesus Christ in early Christian Traditions, Cambridge,
1995, as being one of the latest and also one of the most ambitious
treatments of the subject.
Pages 69-72 of his book contain his discussion of the gram-
matical arguments which have been used in the loti¢ XQLOTOV
debate. A. J. Hultgren may have overstated his case, when he
claimed that, apart from the passages under discussion, whenever
Paul uses Lots with a genitive which is clearly to be understood
as subjective, ‘the article is invariably present’; but the fact remains
that the article is at any rate almost always present in these cases,
and its absence in the miotig XQLoTOU passages tells strongly in
favour of the objective genitive interpretation. Wallis’ attempts to
weaken the force of this argument strike me as unconvincing.
The claim which he makes on p. 71 that, ‘apart from Paul, there
are no unambiguous cases in the New Testament where mtlotic
followed by Christ or God in the genitive case must be interpreted
objectively’ may be challenged. The injunction €yete miotiw Beot
in Mark 11.22 is surely as unambiguous a case as one could desire.
To suggest, as Wallis does, that Oeot is a genitive of origin (‘faith
from God?) is surely a desperate move. Three other examples are
perhaps less clear, though I suspect that the genitive is in each of
them objective. In each case the article is present before mioTic,
and this leads J. D. G. Dunn (though he is a supporter of the
objective genitive in the mtottg XQELOTOD passages) to take these
genitives as subjective.® In James 2.1 he takes thv mioti tot
xVELOV HU@V Inood Xeuototd to mean ‘the faith which our Lord
Jesus Christ himself displayed’. But it is surely natural in the
* A. J. Hultgren, ‘The Pistis Christou Formulation in Paul’, in NT 22 (1980),
p. 253.
° Dunn, op. cit., pp. 732-3.

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context to understand un ev MECCMMOAHUpiats exEetE TI

MLOTLV TOU XVELOV UV "Inoot Xeuotot to mean ‘do not try to
combine the faith which you have in our Lord Jesus Christ with
respect of persons’. I would suggest that the reason for the definite
article here is not to signal a subjective genitive but to make the
reference to faith more specific — not faith generally but the faith
which those addressed are assumed to possess. In Revelation
2.13 ovx Hevynow tiv smiotwv WOU surely more probably means
‘you have not denied your faith in me’ (the article having the force
of ‘your’) than ‘you have not denied my faith’. Similarly, in
Revelation 14.12 ot tyQotvtes tas EvtoAds tod BEod xai trv
mtiottv “Inoot would seem to mean ‘those who keep the com-
mandments of God and their faith in Jesus’ (the article having the
specifying force of ‘their’).
On p. 72 Wallis offers his translation of Romans 3.21—26, in
which he represents 51a mlotews “Inoot Xeuotod in v. 22 by
‘through Jesus Christ’s faith’ and tov €x mtotews "Inoot in v. 26
by ‘the one [who lives] from Jesus’ faith [or the one participating in
Jesus’ faith], and also renders dia mlotews in v. 25 as ‘through
[Jesus’] faith’. He raises the question whether, when Paul used the
perfect passive of PaveQovvy in v. 21, ‘the emphasis falls on the
initial manifestation or [on the] subsequent “revelations” through
the gospel’ (p. 74), and suggests that many commentators who have
understood “Inoot Xetotot in v. 22 as objective have thereby
been led to ‘qualify this revelation in terms of human response
and, by so doing, to come down on the side of the latter’ (that is, on
the side of taking the emphasis in mepavéewtat to be on the
subsequent revelations through the preached gospel rather than on
the initial manifestation). He concludes his paragraph by saying
that ‘emphasis upon the faith of believers at this stage in Paul’s
argument seems unlikely for a number of reasons’ (p. 74).
But p. 75 shows that he has massively misunderstood some, at
any rate, of the scholars he criticizes. He argues that Paul would
not be likely to ‘maintain that the revelation of God’s righteousness
was dependent upon or mediated by the faith of believers on
hearing the gospel’, and goes on to list a series of objections to the
“objective genitive interpretation:

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(i) it ‘detracts ... from’ the sufficiency of God’s grace mani-

fested in Christ’;
(ii) it ‘contradicts Paul’s previous assessment of humanity’s
unwillingness to respond to God’;
(iii) it ‘fails to accommodate the “pastness” of the initial
revelation of God’s righteousness attested in 3.21’;
(iv) it makes Paul guilty of ‘unnecessary redundancy in style’,
‘given that cig MAVTAG TOUS MLOTEVOVTAS relates to
human faith in Jesus Christ’; and
(v) it ‘places the emphasis in the disclosure of God’s righteous-
ness upon human response rather than divine initiative’.
These would be weighty charges, if they were true.
But to take the personal genitive in dia mlotews “Inood
XQLOTOU as objective does not mean that one is suggesting that the
human response ‘qualifies’ the revelation of God’s righteousness
or that that revelation is ‘dependent upon or mediated by’ the faith
of those who hear. The structure of the sentence clearly associates
the phrase not with memavéowtat but with Sixatoovvy. It is
added surely in order to indicate that the only appropriate response
to God’s duxatoovvy is simply to accept it as his altogether
undeserved gift given in Jesus Christ. It does not make the
revelation of God’s righteousness in the on-going preaching of the
gospel dependent on thatresponse; still less is there any question
of its making the revelation of that righteousness in the gospel
events themselves in any way so dependent. In reply to Wallis’s
several objections:

(i) To indicate what is the appropriate human response to

God’s gracious action in no way detracts from the
sufficiency of God’s grace. To recognize that it makes
possible, and calls forth, a response on the part of human
beings does not call its sufficiency in question.
(11) The reference to human faith in no way contradicts what
Paul has said of men’s unresponsiveness to God; for faith,
as Paul understands it, ‘is not a qualification which some
men already possess in themselves so that the gospel, when
it comes to them, finds them eligible to receive its benefits

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 ON THE IItotts Xerotot QUESTION

. . [it] is the openness to the gospel which God Himself

creates’:
(iii) The ‘pastness’ of ‘the gospel events in their objectiveness
as events which took place at a particular time in the past
and are quite independent of, and distinct from, the
response of men to them’ is surely in no way called in
question by recognizing that, when those events are re-
called in the preaching, the appropriate response of the
hearers is faith in Jesus Christ.
(iv) Dunn’s answer to this objection, as raised earlier by R. B.
Hays and M. D. Hooker, is surely adequate. tg mavtTAas
TOUS MLOTEVOVTGS is required ‘in order to emphasize the
mavtac ... Students of Romans will not need to be
reminded that this “all” is a thematic word in the letter,
being used again and again, often with varying degrees of
redundancy ... (see particularly 1.5, 16; 2.10; 4.11, 16;
10.4, 11-13). The usage in 3.22 is simply part of asustained
motif.”® .
(v) The assertion that the double reference to human faith in
v. 22 (if *Inoot Xeuotot is understood as objective) places
the emphasis upon human response rather than on the
divine initiative is plausible only on the assumption that-
faith in Christ is what a good many commentators on
Romans have been at pains to explain that it is not.

On p. 76 Wallis interrupts his discussion of Romans 3.21—26,

in order to try to build up a case for understanding Paul’s thought
to be that ‘the righteousness and, particularly, its initial revelation
is mediated by Jesus Christ’s mtotic’. He claims that in the Old
Testament God’s righteousness and God’s faithfulness are often
synonymous. So we should ask what is the relationship between
God’s faithfulness and Christ’s mitotic. He finds the idea that
God’s faithfulness can find expression through a human being in
Psalm 89, and a further development of the idea in the Psalms of

7C.E.B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the

_ Romans 1, Edinburgh, 71990, p. 90.
§ Dunn, op. cit., pp. 740-1.

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Solomon. This background, he claims, provides ‘a context in which

Paul’s Sua aiotews Inoot Xe.otot in Romans 3.22 can be
interpreted meaningfully as a subjective genitive, referring to the
totic of Jesus Christ, the messiah, through which the covenantal
faithfulness or righteousness of God is revealed’ (p. 78). He then
turns to Paul’s quotation of Habakkuk in Romans 1.17, and, taking
&x MLOTEWS not with 6 Sixatos but with the verb Cyoeta, argues
that, for Paul, 6 dixatos ‘refers primarily to Christ who lived by
faith’ (p. 81), and that the purport of €x mlotews eic OTL in v.
17a may well be that Jesus’s ‘life of faith (x mlotEWws ) provides the
basis for the righteousness and faith (gig mtottv) of all people’ (p.
82).
But have we not here a very wilful exegesis? Could Paul have
expected those who heard his letter read to realize that they were
to understand the quotation as referring to Christ, when he had
not mentioned Christ since vv. 8 and 9, but had clearly referred
to the Christian believer in v. 16? And the modern exegete
must surely take into consideration the formulation of 5.1
(Atxatwbévtes ov &% mlotews ...), which undoubtedly refers
to Christian believers, and makes Wallis’s contention (p. 80) that
Paul would not be likely to refer to the believer as ‘righteous’ highly
questionable (cf. the use of Stxatot in 5.19). And I think that
Wallis’s claim (in arguing against connecting €% miotewes with 6
dixatoc) that appropriation of justification by believing in Christ
and appropriation of justification by responding to God’s revela-
tion of his law by a life of covenantal faithfulness are in fact much
the same sort of thing, and that it would be more in keeping with
Paul’s thought to see the significant contrast as being between
justification on the basis of human response and justification on
the basis of God’s universal grace in Christ than between ‘works’
and ‘faith’, must surely be rejected.
With regard to v. 25 Wallis argues, against taking du [tic]
MLOTEWS to refer to believers’ faith, that ‘it seems theologically
incoherent for Paul to maintain that the efficacy of Christ’s sacri-
ficial death is dependent upon human faith’ (pp. 82—3). It would
indeed be, if that were what Paul is doing! But, on the assumption
that miotewes refers to believers’ faith, we may surely take him to

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 ON THE IItotig Xetotot QUESTION

mean not that God purposed’ that Christ should be through men’s
faith a tAaotreLov by the shedding of his blood, but that God
purposed that he should be a tAaotyeuov by the shedding of his
blood, the appropriate response to which on men’s part would be
faith. I think we may explain the awkward placing of dia [tfc]
Miotews between tkaotyeLov and év tH adtod aiwatt, which
are surely meant to be connected together, as being due to Paul’s
recognition that to have placed it after €v T© abtOV aiwatt would
have obscured the fact that the following eic EvSetEtv x.T.. must
be connected with Ov TE0EHETO O HEds LAGOTHOLOV EV THO AVTOD
atuatt, and not with the phrase indicating the proper response of
human beings to God’s act in Christ. I take it that Paul inserted
dia [THs] wlotEWws, in spite of the serious damage this would do to
his sentence, because he recognized the importance of insisting
both that this (AaotyeLov would demand a response of faith on
the part of human beings and also that only faith could be an
appropriate response, all thoughts of being able to establish a claim
on God by our works being excluded.
Wallis thinks that 6c [tic] mttotews should be understood as
referring to Jesus’ faith. But in what sense was Christ to be
iAaotNoOLOV ‘through his faith’? I do not think that the references
to faith in the passages concerning Jewish martyrs in 4 Maccabees -
16.18—23: also 5.25;°7.19, 21;-15.24;.17.2, and 1: Maccabees 2.59,
and the evidence of the close relationship between faith and
obedience in Paul, are enough to give credibility to Wallis’ case. It
may well be true that Jesus in his earthly life was a man of faith and
that he retained his faith to the very end; but I fail to see how his
faith was that which made his dying efficacious for the atonement
of human beings’ sins, which 614 [tfc] mtiotews (if the reference
is to Jesus’ faith) would surely mean that it was. Wallis’s question
on p. 85, ‘But does the verse explain how Christ’s death acts as
an tAaotHoLov for God?’ and his observation that ‘év T avtot
aiwati can be taken as an instrumental dative of price with the
sense that atonement is achieved through his [i.e. Christ’s] faith at

° Wallis, p. 72, translates TE0EVETtO by ‘put forward’. For reasons for pre-
ferring ‘purposed’ see Cranfield, op. cit., pp. 208-10.

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the cost of his blood’ suggest that he is thinking of the (\aot/QLOV

as an action of Christ by which he somehow satisfies God. But did
Paul really think in this way? Did he not see God’s action and
Christ’s action as a unity and the tAaotyeELov as something
accomplished by God in Christ?! Is this not why he can say that
God proves his love for us by the fact that Christ died for us (Rom.
5.8) and can use ‘the love of Christ’ (8.35) and ‘the love of God
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (8.39) as synonyms? If Paul
thought that God’s very self was present in the Son who suffered,
would he think in terms of Christ’s faith making his death act as a
iAaotyeLov for God?
On p. 87 Wallis turns to the consideration of tOv €% MLOTEWS
*Inootv in v. 26. He first makes the point that here Paul uses
the simple name Jesus without the addition of ‘Christ’ or ‘Lord’,
and claims that where he does this, ‘the focus tends to be upon
the earthly existence of Jesus’ (p. 88). But this cannot be accepted
as a reason for taking this genitive as subjective, since it is
clearly not a rule that bound Paul. In 2 Corinthians 4.5, for
example, Inootv XeELotov is immediately followed by Inootv
without any obvious change of significance (cf. the other
occurrences of the simple name in this chapter, especially in v. 14;
also | Thess. 1.10; 4.14). °
Wallis translates the phrase: ‘the one [who lives] from Jesus’
faith [or the one participating in Jesus’ faith] (p. 72). But, if that
is the meaning of the phrase in 3.26, must we not say that
this contradicts the mavtac tovcs miotevovtac of v. 22? If
God’s justification, is only for those who live from Jesus’ faith or
actually participate in it, is this not justification by works with a
vengeance? For to say that someone ‘lives from Jesus’ faith’ or
participates in Jesus’ faith is surely to say much more than to say
that someone believes in, trusts, Jesus Christ. Such an inter-
pretation is surprising, coming from one who has only a few pages
earlier criticized those who accept the objective genitive explana-
tion of mioti¢ Xootov for putting too much emphasis on the
human response.

' Cf. Cranfield, op. cit., p. 217; also 2, p. 840.

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 ON THE IItotig Xertotot QUESTION

As to Wallis’ argument from T@ €x mtiotews "ABoadw in 4.16,

it is true that both this phrase and the one we are concerned with
exhibit the construction 0 €% miotewes plus a genitive, but the fact
that in 4.16 the following genitive is subjective does not necessarily
mean that the following genitive here must also be subjective
(these are the only places in the Pauline epistles or indeed in the
New Testament where this construction appears). In the absence
of any conclusive evidence that Paul avoided using mitotic with an
objective genitive, it is surely just as reasonable to argue from the
fact that there are a number of places where €% stLOTEWGS occurs in
close association with dtxatotv, Sixatog or Stxatoovvn, and
clearly denotes the believer’s faith (e.g. 3.30; 5.1; 9.30, 32; Gal. 3.8;
5.5), that it is probable that totus here too refers to the believer’s
faith.
The last part of Wallis’ discussion of the Romans evidence is
headed ‘Human faith in the dispensation of faith-grace’ (pp. 98—
102). I found it very hard to follow. I cannot help wondering
whether the author, if the work of the Holy Spirit had had a larger
place in his thinking, might not have had less difficulty with the
emphasis which he feels the exponents of the objective genitive
explanation put on the human response. I doubt very much
whether Paul would have been happy with the conclusion that in
Romans 8 ‘Paul is not making a temporal distinction between pre-
and post-conversion situations, but establishing an existential one
in which each person either gives God permission to work through
his Spirit or relies on his own resources’ (p. 102). And the final
sentence of this section, ‘Life in the Spirit is certainly about coming
within the influence of the Spirit of Christ, but each prompting of
the Spirit must be recognized and, so to, speak, given permission
before the individual participates in the realities secured in the
death and resurrection of Jesus’, seems to me equally unsatisfactory
as an exposition of Pauline teaching. Would it not be truer to
Pauline teaching to say that it is the Holy Spirit who in the first
place makes a human being free to believe and who thereafter
renews and sustains the faith he has created?
Wallis then turns to the relevant Galatians passages (p. 102).
“He argues that, if uiotews in its two occurrences in Galatians 2.16

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as well as émtotevoauev refers to the faith of believers, ‘the

emphasis within this key verse for Paul’s soteriology falls rather
awkwardly upon the believer rather than Christ’ (p. 105). But this
opinion would seem to be based on the assumption that faith in
Christ, as understood by Paul, is something very different from
what a great many students of Paul have understood it to be. For
Paul, as we understand him, it is most certainly not on the believer
that the emphasis falls, when he speaks of faith in Christ, nor on
the believer’s faith, but on the object of faith, Christ himself.
Wallis’ questions on p. 106, ‘Upon what, then, does Paul encourage
the Galatian Christians to base their standing before God? Belief
in Christ or works of the law? Or the more fundamental reality of
the faith of Christ himself ...?’ imply that those who take the
genitives Inoot Xoeuotov and XeQuotov in Galatians 2.16 as
objective are suggesting that Paul was encouraging the Galatian
Christians to see their faith as the basis of their standing before
God. But that is altogether untrue. Christians are not to put their
trust in their own faith, in themselves as believing, but, abandoning
all self-trust, to put all their trust in Christ. It seems to me that
Wallis has thoroughly misunderstood the views of those whom he
is criticizing, having assumed that they must share that horrible
distortion of evangelical teaching which makes faith into a human
meritorious work, a distortion which admittedly is to be found in
some circles, but which it is quite unfair to attribute to all those
who accept the objective genitive explanation of the alotic
XQLOTOD passages.
With regard to 2.19b—20, Wallis comments: ‘Paul’s . . . life is
now enabled by the faith of the son of God, whose love for him was
epitomized in sacrificial death. Further, given the intimacy of the
language (C@ dé ovxett EY, Cf] SE Ev Euol XEuotdc), it would
be difficult to envisage how Paul’s response of faith could be
meaningfully distinguished from that of the son of God who dwells
within him’ (p. 116). And in a footnote he adds: ‘It is also worth
noting that even if Gal. 2.20 does refer to faith in the son of God, it
is still Christ who dwells within Paul. Who, then, is the Paul —
separate from the “Christ within” — who so believes?’ But, when
the conclusion is reached that it is difficult to see a meaningful

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 ON THE IItotig Xetotot QUESTION

distinction between the faith of the Christian and Christ’s own

faith, has not the notion of participation in Christ been taken too
far? And, when the author later on speaks of ‘an existential
continuity between Christ’s faith and the faith of believers’ (p.
125), must we not ask whether the fact that, while he was sinless,
we are all manifestly sinners does not constitute a serious
interruption of that continuity? The faith that can meaningfully be
ascribed to one who was truly obedient to God is surely something
very different from the faith of those who have to live by God’s
forgiveness every moment. Paul’s language in Galatians 2.19b—20
is certainly bold and has proved liable. to be misunderstood; but so
long as TOU VLOd Tov OEot is taken as an objective genitive, there
is a safeguard present to maintain the distinction between Christ
and his apostle unblurred. When, however, the genitive is
understood as subjective that safeguard is removed.
The last mtoti¢ XeEuototv verse in Galatians is 3.22, which
Wallis translates: ‘But the scripture has imprisoned all things under
[the power of] sin, so that the promise on the basis of Jesus
Christ’s faith might be given to those who believe [or who
participate in the dispensation of faith]’ (p. 103). The order of the
English words suggests that ‘on the basis of Jesus Christ’s faith’ is
meant to be connected with ‘the promise’; but Paul, had he meant —
this, would probably have written either ] &% mlotews "Inoot
Xovotot émayyedia or } Emayyedia 7H €% alotews “Inoot
Xouotov.!! But more probably the words should be connected
with the verb ‘might be given’. Once more the author confidently
accepts the subjective genitive explanation. On p. 117 he makes
the following assertions: ‘for Paul, the promise is not simply
appropriated by faith (totc miotevovoty, 3.22), but by partici-
pating — through faith — in Jesus Christ, who inherited the promise
through faith (£x miotews Inoot Xeuotod). In consequence, the
faith of believers can never be dissociated from the faith of Christ.
It is his faith which makes the faith of others possible and enables

The case of 6 5& Sixatocs éx mlotews Cryoetat in 1.17 is rather different,

since Paul might well not want to change the word-order of the Habakkuk
* quotation.

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them to participate in its inheritance.’ But the basis in the text of

Galatians for these assertions seems altogether too questionable for
them to be accepted. If the faith of Jesus Christ was as central to
Paul’s thought as these assertions indicate, it is strange indeed that
his letters contain no single unambiguous reference to it. Once
again I think we can say that the objective genitive explanation is
by far the more probable.
The last of the seven totiG XELOTON verses is Philippians 3.9,
and here too Wallis argues for the subjective genitive. He
translates: ‘and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my
own which comes from the law, but a righteousness from God
through [or by means of] Christ’s faith which leads to [or for the
purpose of] faith’ (p. 118). Wallis notes that there is a contrast
between two things: ‘righteousness €% VOUOU appropriated by
human effort’ and ‘righteousness €% Oe00 appropriated 61a
mLotews “Inoot’ (p. 119). He then argues that, if 61a miotEws
XOLOTOD is understood as ‘by faith in Christ’, the two contrasted
things ‘become remarkably similar in their emphasis upon human
response’; that ‘this hardly reflects the centrality of Christ for Paul’;
and that it ‘rests upon a dichotomy between “works of the law”
and “faith in Christ” not evident in Philippians’ (p. 120). But the
first and second of these objections rest on a misunderstanding of
what faith in Christ is. In faith in Christ the emphasis is not on the
subject but altogether on the object, and the human response is
itself God-given. The centrality of Christ is in no way called in
question. In reply to the third objection, it may be pointed out that
the paragraph 3.2—11 is the only part of Philippians where the
subject-matter dealt with was likely to occasion this dichotomy.
Wallis suggests that Paul thinks of each Christian’s relationship
to God as being ‘grounded in a right-relatedness to God com-
municated through the faith of Christ’, and that ‘the link between
chapter 3 and the Christ-hymn of Philippians 2.6—11 . . . and the
relationship between obedience and faith in the apostle’s thinking
..., together with the flow of the letter, would encourage Paul’s
readers to interpret the establishing of God’s righteousness 81d
mlotews XEuotov in terms of his obedient self-giving in death
mentioned in chapter 2’ (pp. 120-1). But I find it very difficult to

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 ON THE IItotig Xeuotot QUESTION

take this seriously as exegesis of what we actually have in the

text.
Wallis finally explains ésti tH] siotet as meaning: ‘which leads
to [or for the purpose of] faith [of believers]’, attributing a final
force to ml, as in Galatians 5.13 and 1 Thessalonians 4.7. But in
those two examples the nouns are without the definite article.
Dunn is surely right in saying that the presence of the definite
article here ‘must mean that Paul was referring to the same faith
both times — “the faith”, that is, the faith just mentioned’. This
grammatical point surely excludes the possibility of taking the first
miotic in the verse to refer to Christ’s, and the second to believers’,
faith. I think we can only conclude that tiotic XEuotot here must
mean ‘faith in Christ’.
In his concluding remarks on Paul Wallis claims to ‘have dis-
covered substantial grounds for maintaining that in each case [that
is, in each of the seven zlotiG XELotov. constructions] Paul had
Christ’s own faith in mind’, and also lists in a footnote other
occurrences of uLOTUC in Paul’s letters which he thinks may refer to
Christ’s faith: e.g. Romans 1.17 (Hab. 2.4); 3.25; Galatians 3.2, 5,
11 (Hab. 2.4), 14, 23-26; Philippians 1.27 (p. 124, and n. 250).
In conclusion, I want to make a number of points.
(i) In view of the large number of times that mLotevetv and
JtLOTLG occur in the New Testament and in the Pauline
epistles in particular, it seems to me that the statistical
evidence which I summarized above should carry great
weight. The absence of any clear statement that Jesus
‘believed’, ‘had faith’ (110 teVetv) and of any unambiguous
use of sttotic of Christ’s own faith, and the fact that there
are quite unambiguous references to faith in Christ are
surely persuasive arguments against the subjective genitive
interpretation and for the objective.
(ii) When we add to the statistical evidence just mentioned the
grammatical evidence adduced by Hultgren and others,
showing that, apart from the seven occurrences of the
formulation which are under discussion (in all of which it

~!2 Dunn, op. cit., p. 744.

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On ROMANS

is anarthrous), miottc is almost, if not quite, invariably

preceded by the definite article whenever the following
genitive is clearly to be understood as subjective, the
case against the subjective genitive explanation seems to
me to be already so strong that we should contemplate
setting it aside only if there are overwhelmingly convincing
exegetical reasons for so doing.
(iii) None of the exegetical arguments of which I am aware that
have been put forward in support of taking sttotic in these
places as referring to Christ’s own faith seems to me
convincing, and like, Dunn,'? I am puzzled by the fact that
so many able scholars are seeking with such enthusiasm to
promote this interpretation.
(iv) It is well known that Paul uses totic to denote several
different things. At any rate these may be distinguished:
(a) faithfulness, trustworthiness (e.g. Rom. 3.5, of God;
Gal. 5.22, of believers); (b) a special charisma given only to
some believers (e.g. 1 Cor. 12.8—11); (c) faith in the sense
of fides qua creditur; (d) faith in the sense of confidence that
one’s faith in sense (c) allows one to do or not do certain
things (e.g. Rom. 14.1, 2 (the verb), 22, 23). Whether a
further meaning, (e) faith in the sense of fides quae creditur,
the body of doctrine believed, is already to be seen in Paul
is disputed. Of these I think we can take (c) as the char-
acteristic Pauline sense. But the view that Paul referred to
the faith of Jesus Christ (tio tic sense (c)) seems to me to
be open to an objection which has not been given the
attention it deserves. I get the impression that ‘faith’ (both
MLOTLG and MLOTEVELV) in its most characteristic Pauline
use carries with it what may be called a ‘negative’ or
‘excluding’ or indeed a ‘sinfulness-admitting’ sense. To be
justified €x mLoTEws is to receive as God’s free, utterly
undeserved gift in Jesus Christ a status of righteousness
before him. €% mtotews excludes all thought of earning
that status by anything one can do. So there is a contrast

'3 Op. cit., p. 744.

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 ON THE IItotig Xeutotot QUESTION

between justification €x miotews and justification &&

éeyav. Faith then excludes everything by which one might
think to establish for oneself a claim on God, to put him
under an obligation. To believe in Christ Jesus (e.g. gic
XQLotov Inootv mtotevetv in Gal. 2.16) is to put all one’s
trust in God’s grace in him, to the exclusion of all self-trust
and all attempts to justify oneself. It is the attitude of one
who knows and confesses that he is a sinner. This ‘negative’
function of mtotic/mLOtEVELV is very evident in Paul’s
appeal to Abraham in Romans 4. Whatever Paul’s Jewish
contemporaries thought about Abraham’s faith, it is
apparent that, although he recognized that from a human
point of view there was indeed something heroic about
Abraham’s believing God’s promise when all his circum-
stances contradicted it (vv. 17b—21), Paul nevertheless
understood Abraham’s faith as the faith of one who, having
no meritorious works of his own to his credit, can only trust
in the God who justifies the ungodly (tov duxatovvta TOV
aoeBT)), the implication surely being that Abraham too is
ungodly like all the rest of fallen humanity. And the
point already made in wv. 1—5 is further driven home by
vv. 6-8, in which LXX Psalm 31.1—2 is brought in to help —
to interpret Genesis 15.6, the basic biblical text concerning
Abraham’s faith: ‘even as David also pronounces the bless-
ing of the man to whom God reckons righteousness apart
from works: “Blessed are those whose iniquities have been
forgiven and whose sins have been covered; blessed is the
man whose sin the Lord will in no wise reckon’’’.

If zttotus, when used in what I have called above ‘sense (c)’,

was in Paul’s mind as strongly associated with the situation of the
sinner who knows that he has no ground on which to stand before
God except God’s own sheer grace in Jesus Christ as I think it was,
then this would suggest that it would not be likely to come at all
naturally to him to speak of Jesus Christ’s xtottc. It would also
suggest that we should be wise to hesitate about trying to construct
a theology in which Jesus Christ’s faith has an important place.

97
 i af bes rates
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. ties Lh
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Wa a

een 4
La
Pied
 8

Giving a Dog a Bad Name

A note on H. Raisdnen’s Paul and the Law

Heikki Raisanen’s Paul and the Law, Tiibingen, 1983, has been
warmly welcomed.' There is no doubt that it is a significant
contribution to Pauline studies, and we are indebted to its author
for having stated his views so forcefully and unambiguously. He
has made some useful points, and the provocativeness of his book
will surely stimulate his readers to further reflection and research.
But ‘Has he been fair to St Paul?’ is a question needing to be asked.
Let me say at once that I have no intention of claiming that
Paul’s letters are free from inconsistencies. Like all other fallen
human beings Paul was no doubt liable to err and to be incon-
sistent. But that his epistles are as riddled with self-contradictions —
as Raisanen would have us believe I find hard to accept. Liberally
scattered throughout his book are such judgments as these:
‘Apparently without noticing it, Paul is thus tacitly operating with
a double concept of “law” (p. 21); ‘Of course Paul is quite capable
of turning verses of the OT into their opposites’ (p. 95, n. 13);
‘these inadvertent admissions’ (p. 107); ‘irreconcilable tension’ (p.
110); ‘one more blatant self-contradiction’ (p. 153, n. 120); ‘As so
often, his theology has a Janus face. He points in one (covenantal)
direction and goes in another (without, I think, realizing where he
actually is)’ (p. 188); ‘identifying in an unreflective way the

* First published in Journal

for the Study of the New Testament 38 (1990), pp.
77-85.

! See, for example, A. J. M. Wedderburn’s review article in S7T 38 (1985),

pp. 613-22.

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On ROMANS

Septuagintal mitotic, with his own “faith”’ (p. 189, n. 130);

‘apparently without realizing the looseness of his speech’ (p.
199); ‘This assertion is demonstrated by exaggerating blanket
accusations’ (p. 199); ‘In sum, I am not able to find in the relevant
literature [that is, in the rest of the NT and in the other early
Christian writings which he considers] any conception of the law
which involves such inconsistencies or such arbitrariness as does
Paul’s’ (p. 228). Was Paul really quite as inconsistent, confused
and incompetent, quite as careless and unreflective, as this? As I
read Raisanen’s book, I could not help thinking that for him Paul
just cannot do right. It seemed to be a case of ‘Give a dog a bad
name, and hang him.’
A definitive answer to the question whether Raisanen has been
fair to Paul could only be given on the basis of a full and careful
examination of the detailed exegesis contained in his book. In a
short article it is impossible to examine all this material. We shall
concentrate on just one of his chapters — chapter III, which is
entitled ‘Can the law be fulfilled?’ If in this limited sample it
appears that he has been unfair, readers will surely be well advised
to exercise caution with regard to the rest. My own copy of the
book certainly contains a good many question marks pencilled in
the margins in the other chapters as well as in the one I have chosen
for special scrutiny here.
In the brief first section (pp. 94-6), which has the heading
‘Fulfilling the whole law is impossible’, the author appeals
particularly to Galatians 3.10-12 and 5.3 as proving that it was
Paul’s view that the law requires ‘total obedience’ and that such
total obedience is impossible (p. 95). With regard to this section we
need not, I think, quarrel with the author, even though there were
one or two places in it which gave rise to a little uneasiness.
In section 2, which is headed ‘All are under sin’, Raisdnen
deals with Romans 1.18—3.20. In the concluding paragraph of the
section he quotes with approval S. Sandmel’s description of Paul’s
account as ‘grotesque and vicious’ and his opinion that a Jewish
reader ‘must ... conclude ... that Paul lacks for those who
disagree with him the love which he described in 1 Cor. 13’, adding
his own comment: ‘A Christian reader should agree!’ Raisanen’s

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concluding judgment is that ‘Paul’s argument is here simply a piece

of propagandist denigration’ (p. 101).
In reply to this it must be said that, if Paul really were simply
pronouncing his own judgment on Gentiles and Jews, then
Raisanen’s condemnation of him would indeed be largely justified.
As an historian’s assessment of the moral condition of his con-
temporaries Romans 1.18—3.20 would indeed be grossly unfair.
But, in view of the surely undeniable parallelism between
AMOXOAVTTETAL YAQ SEyt] GEeod in 1.18 and Sixatoovvyn yao
Oeov €v avt@ [that is, in the preaching of the gospel]
ATOXAAVITETAL in 1.17, we must, surely, understand Romans
1.18—3.20 as being, in Paul’s intention, not his own moral
evaluation of his contemporaries but his witness to the gospel’s
judgment of all human beings, that judgment which the gospel
itself pronounces and which can be recognized and submitted to
only in the light of the gospel, that judgment which Paul has heard
and to which he has himself already submitted.” It seems to us that
Raisanen has radically misunderstood this passage, because he has
considered it in detachment from its context and in particular from
what immediately precedes it, and so, instead of recognizing in it
Paul’s witness to the judgment, which (having been once for all
manifested in the gospel events) is now being again and again
revealed whenever the gospel is preached, has seen merely a
moralistic attempt on Paul’s part to demonstrate by empirical
arguments the sinfulness of non-Christian Gentiles and Jews.
Raisanen seems to see Christians as being outside the scope of
this passage. It is presumably because he does so that he can
complain that ‘Paul has double standards when evaluating
Jewish and Christian transgressions respectively’ (p. 100). But,
when this passage is considered in its context, it is surely clear
that its purpose is to establish that all human beings (Jesus Christ
alone excepted) ‘are under sin’. Christians are surely embraced in
the GvOows01 of 1.18, the Iovdaioi te xat “EAAnves navies of
2 It is true that in 3.9 Paul used the word meoyntiaodueda. (RV: ‘we before
laid to the charge . . . of’); but this surely should not be pressed to mean that he
_was thinking of himself as the originator of the charge, rather than as the witness
to the judgment which the cross has disclosed.

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3.9 and the ndvtec of 3.23 (though it is, of course, true that Paul
will have more to say about them than just that they are included SO
re
in this judgment). We take it that Paul’s basic witness to the
gospel’s judgment of human beings is in 1.18—32, and that these
verses are the disclosure not only of the idolatry of ancient and
modern paganism but also of the idolatry cherished in Israel, in the
Christian church and in the thoughts and life of each Christian
believer. The Jews are then specially dealt with in what follows,
not out of any anti-Jewish prejudice but because Paul recognizes
that they do indeed have a real moral superiority. It is surely
precisely because he recognizes this superiority that he is con-
cerned to show that even this undoubted superiority does not make
them an exception to the general judgment indicated in 1.18—32. It
seems to us that in this section, far from substantiating his
accusations against Paul’s fairness, Raisanen has shown himself to
be seriously confused in his understanding of Paul’s argument.
In section 3 (‘Non-Christians fulfilling the law’) Raisanen dis-
cusses Romans 2.14—15 and 26—27. He sees them as standing
‘in flat contradiction to the main thesis’ of 1.18—3.20 that all are
under sin (p. 103). On pp. 103—5 he summarizes several suggested
explanations of these verses which have been put forward with a
view to reconciling them with Paul’s main concern in 1.18—3.20,
but concludes that none of them is credible. We therefore, he
thinks, ‘have to accept that Paul is really speaking of Gentiles who
fulfil the law outside the Christian community’ (p. 105). He goes
on to stress that Paul is here not interested in the Gentiles for their
own sake but is merely using them ‘as convenient weapons to hit
the Jew with’ (p. 106) and to maintain that, when Paul is thinking
of Gentiles in this incidental way and not actually reflecting on
their situation, it comes quite naturally to him to think that they
can fulfil the law (p. 106). He also suggests that we should conclude
that, when Paul is not actually reflecting on the situation of the
Jews, he can think of them too as fulfilling the law (he appeals to
Phil. 3.6 in support). So he comes to the position: ‘The theological
thesis in Rom. 1.18—3.20 is that all are under sin and that, there-
fore, no one can fulfil the law. Inadvertently, however, Paul
admits even within that very section that, on another level of his

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consciousness at least, he does not share this idea. Paul’s mind is

divided’ (pp. 106f). Clearly then, for Raisanen, there is at this point
‘a formidable tension in Paul’s thought’ (p. 107).
But is this fair? Even on the assumption that Paul must be
‘speaking of Gentiles who fulfil the law outside the Christian
community’, it is doubtful whether he was quite as confused as
Raisanen has made out. And, if the explanation that Paul was
thinking of the Gentile Christians (an explanation going back to
patristic times and accepted by a number of recent interpreters,
though dismissed as incredible by Raisanen) is right, as we are still
confident that it is,’ an intelligible line of thought can be discerned.

> I tried to discuss the matter in 4 Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the
Epistle to the Romans 1, Edinburgh, °1987, pp. 151-63, 172-4. Raisdnen’s five
reasons for rejecting this explanation (pp. 104-5) do not seem to me at all
convincing. In reply to the first (that ‘In this context it is very difficult to take
€Ovn in any other sense than “non-Jew” in general’) it may be said that there is
no question of taking the word in any other sense than ‘Gentiles’ or ‘non-Jews’.
What is being suggested is that, when Paul used €0vn, which here, on Raisanen’s
own interpretation just as much as on the Gentile Christian interpretation, must
mean not ‘the Gentiles’ (in the sense of ‘the Gentiles as a whole or all Gentiles’)
but ‘Gentiles’ (in the sense of ‘some Gentiles’ — cf. the similarly inarticulate .
€0vn in 9.30), he was thinking of the Christian ones. The context does not seem
to present any difficulty for this. Both Raisanen’s second and third objections
(that ‘it is inconceivable that Paul could say that Gentile Christians fulfil the law
by nature .. . for the Christians’ fulfilment of the law is the fruit of the Spirit, and
‘how could he say that Gentile Christians are without the law in the sense that
it is unknown to them?”) fail, if it is accepted that mvoet in v. 14 should be
connected with €yovta rather than with mouMouv. His fourth objection (that
EQUTOIC ELOLV VOUOG is a surprising thing for Paul to say of Gentile Christians)
does not seem at all strong. Why should not Paul have made use of this
stereotyped expression to indicate that these Gentile Christians inwardly desire
to obey the law? With the fifth objection (that it is unlikely that an allusion to
Jeremiah 31.33 was intended in v. 15) we are in danger of falling into a circular
argument, since the main reason for denying that Jeremiah 31.33 is alluded to
here is the assumption that what is referred to in Romans 2.15 is a non-
eschatological fact of Gentile life, while Jeremiah 31.33 refers to an eschatological
work of God to be effected on Israel; but, if Romans 2.15 refers to Gentile
_.. Christians, this objection would fail, since Paul clearly did think that God’s
eschatological promises were beginning to be fulfilled in the life of the Christian
community, both Jewish and Gentile.

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In the course of his attempt to show that the Jews are no exception
to the judgment which 1.18—32 attests, he stresses the importance
of deeds (ova in v. 6, oyou in v. 7, xategyaCouevon in v. 9,
éovyatouévy in v. 10, wountat in v. 13, woumovv in v. 14). It is
not hearing the law but doing it which is decisive. The point
Paul is concerned to make in all this is the negative one, that the
Jews are not an exception to the judgment which the gospel
unveils; but, in making this point, he also alludes — in anticipa-
tion of what he will have to say later on — to those works of the
Christian believer, which, while they in no way establish any claim
on God, are nevertheless, as a sign of faith and gratitude, a token
movement in the direction of obedience, well-pleasing to God. If
this interpretation of 2.14f and 26f is accepted, there is no ‘flat
contradiction’ between these verses and the main thesis of 1.18—
$220.
Section 4, which has the heading, ‘Non-Christians cannot do
good at all’, begins with the surprising claim: ‘It is hardly necessary
to argue once more that the famous passage Romans 7.14—25 is not
intended by Paul as a description of the Christian. It can by now be
taken for granted that he is speaking of man’s existence under the
law’ (p. 109). But, in view of the scale and the intensity of the still
continuing debate over the interpretation of these verses, it is
surely quite intolerable for Raisanen to suggest that the matter is
just about settled and that the interpretation which he favours can
now be taken for granted. If this interpretation is rejected, as we
think it should be, and the view that Paul is describing the life of
the Christian 1s accepted, then Raisanen’s appeal to Romans 7.14—
25 in this section is quite inapposite. Unfortunately, he confines
his case in this section almost entirely to this passage; only in the
last paragraph does he also appeal to the evidence of Romans 8.4—
11. A reference to Romans 8.5—11 was certainly apposite here. But
a serious attempt to draw out Paul’s meaning in these verses, and
particularly in v. 8, was surely called for. It does not seem to us to
have been made.
In section 5, which is headed ‘Christians fulfil the law’,
Raisanen claims that ‘Paul assumes within the framework of his
theological theory . . . that the Christians fulfil what is required by

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the law’, and appeals to Galatians 5.14ff; Romans 13.8—10; Romans

8.4 in support of this (p. 113). Here, Raisanen explains, ‘law’ is
understood in terms of the moral content of the law (pp. 113f). He
sees Romans 8.4, 9-11; 6.14a; Galatians 5.16, 23b as expressing
Paul’s optimistic view of Christians (pp. 114f), a view which
Raisanen insists on understanding as being thoroughly naive. He
speaks of Paul’s ‘extravagant statement’ (p. 114, n. i103), his
‘optimistic assertions’ (p. 116), his being ‘not conscious of any
personal sin in his own life’ (p. 118), and suggests that ‘The
notion of the shortness of time, the eschatological fervour, made it
seem a real possibility that the congregations might be able to live a
sinless life for the short time still left before the parousia’ (p. 118).
At the same time Raisanen sees hints of reality in such passages as
1 Corinthians 5.1—5, 9-13; 6.1—20; 2 Corinthians 12.20f; Galatians
5.15; 6.1, which refer to the existence of sin within the Christian
communities. But he does not at all allow for the possibility that
the evidence that Paul was aware of continuing sin in the church
ought to make us ask whether perhaps Paul’s own meaning 1n those
other passages, which Raisanen assumes express a doctrinaire
optimistic view of the life of Christians, may not actually have been
very much less naive than he thinks. He asserts that the ‘concession -
to reality’ in 1 Corinthians 3.3 ‘flatly contradicts the black-
and-white distinction between those in the flesh and those in the
Spirit made in Rom. 8.5ff? (p. 116). But may the truth not be that
Romans 8.5ff was never meant by Paul as the simplistic contrast
between Christians and non-Christians which Raisanen apparently
assumes that it must have been?
Raisanen concludes this section by quoting, apparently with
full approval, Wernle’s words: ‘Paul does not want to see the
problem of sin in Christian life; therefore it does not exist’ (p. 118).
The unfairness of this verdict is, surely, sufficiently clear from the
presence of those passages which Raisdnen recognizes as hints of
reality. And for those, who, unlike him, take the view that Romans
7.1425 refers to Christians, including the apostle himself at the
time of the composition of Romans, the unfairness of the verdict
“is, of course, much more patently obvious —as also of the statement
(quoted above) that Paul ‘was not conscious of any personal sin in

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his own life’. Convinced as we are of the correctness of this view of

Romans 7.14ff, we are also convinced that Romans 6, 7 and 8, taken
together, as we cannot help thinking Paul meant them to be taken,
present a properly balanced and thoroughly honest account of the
sanctification of believers.
Sections 6 and 7 (headed ‘Summary’ and ‘Analogies?’ respec-
tively need not detain us: the former is very slight (only sixteen
lines), the latter a sort of appendix. By way of conclusion we make
the following observations.
(i) While in several of Paul’s letters a good deal is said
concerning various aspects of the law, there is nowhere in
the extant letters anything like an attempt to set out his
understanding of it systematically as a whole. This means
that the position of the scholar who wants to explain the
structure of Paul’s view of the law is a bit like that of a
person who knows nothing about giraffes but has to try to
draw a picture of one, having nothing to go on but some-
one’s sketch of a giraffe, of which much of the central area
has been obliterated. It is hardly surprising that it is
difficult to understand how the various things which Paul
has said about the law cohere together. Our best hope of
being able to do so would seem to lie in having a personal
rapport with the apostle’s faith.
(il) The fact that many of Paul’s statements about the law
belong to a context of controversy is a further difficulty.
This has to be taken into account; and, since he had to fight
on more than one front, we have to allow for considerable
variation of emphasis according to the different opponents
who claim his attention.
(iii) We get the impression that Raisanen’s approach to his
subject is very simplistic. His impatience with explanations
which reckon with paradox or tension (p. 4) chimes with
this. But theology is surely a field in which a hankering
after simplistic solutions is particularly inappropriate. Here
answers which are both simple and true are often not to be
had.

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(iv) That there is a variety of possible models of consistency

should not be forgotten. Whether in considering the
question of Paul’s consistency or lack of it we have at the
back of our minds a more or a less appropriate model may
well be important. A field of wheat swept by a steady wind
and a Guards’ battalion reacting to a drill sergeant’s orders
would seem to be less suitable models of consistency for
our purpose than a great work of architecture such as
Durham Cathedral or the Royal Border Bridge. Neither
Durham Cathedral nor the Royal Border Bridge could ever
have been erected, let alone remained standing, had it not
been for the careful balancing of contrary thrusts. No one
in his senses would think of suggesting that a cathedral or a
great bridge should be built on the principle of all thrusts
in the same direction. Perhaps this should incline us to be
cautious about writing off Paul’s understanding of the law
as hopelessly inconsistent ?
(v) It is, we believe, a consequence of his simplistic approach
that Raisanen is unable to recognize the appropriateness of
Paul’s using terms expressive of the idea of fulfilment* both
to denote the perfect obedience to the law, which no man
other than Jesus has accomplished, and also to denote those
beginnings of being turned in the direction of obedience
for which the Holy Spirit sets the believer free, that
response of gratitude to God’s grace, which, though it falls
far short of being perfect obedience and in no way estab-
lishes any human claim on God, is nevertheless, in spite of
all its falterings and brokenness, something with which
God in his goodness deigns to be well-pleased.

+ tehetv, MANOOtV, PUAGOOELV, TOLELV, MOUNTS, TEGooELV are used.

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 9

Has the Old Testament Law a

Place in the Christian Life?
A response to Professor Westerholm

Stephen Westerholm’s /srael’s Law and the Church’s Faith: Paul

and His Recent Interpreters' has had an exceptionally enthusiastic
welcome, and is undoubtedly a very important book. Not
surprisingly it has already proved influential, and it seems likely
that it will have a widespread influence for a good many years to
come. Because this is so, it is specially desirable that its
argumentation should be subjected to adequate scrutiny. The
purpose of this essay is to examine just one chapter in detail, the
one entitled “The Law and Christian Behavior’ (Chapter X). This
chapter is selected for examination because the question, to which
it seeks to give a definitive answer, namely, whether or not the Old
Testament law has a place in the Christian life, is, I believe, a
matter of vital importance for the health and integrity of the
church.

I
Westerholm’s contention is that Paul saw no continuing role for
the law in the life of Christians. At the beginning of the chapter he
argues that Paul would hardly have been charged with encouraging

* First published in [rish Biblical Studies 15 (1993), pp. 50-64.

' Grand Rapids, 1988.

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sin, as Romans 3.8; 6.1, 15 imply that he was, had his position been
simply either ‘that the law’s curse has been removed, though its
precepts must be followed, or that the moral law stands, though
the ritual law has been done away with’ (p. 199). The fact that such
a charge could be laid against him with some plausibility must
mean, Westerholm suggests, that he went further than this and
denied the Mosaic law any place in the Christian’s life. But this
argument lacks cogency. Paul’s teaching on justification by faith
would surely have been likely to be misunderstood as encourage-
ment to sin, however much it was accompanied by exhortation to
obey the commands of the law.
Westerholm goes on to try to establish five positions. The first
is: ‘That the ethical behavior which Paul expects of believers
corresponds in content to the moral demands of the Mosaic code
cannot be used to argue the abiding validity of the law’. With
regard to this, it must, I think, be admitted that the overlap in
content between Paul’s moral teaching and the moral demands of
the Mosaic law does not in itself prove that Paul regarded the law
as still authoritative for Christians; but it is thoroughly consistent
with the assumption that he did.
The second position which Westerholm seeks to establish is
that ‘Paul’s statements that Christians “fulfill” the law are .. . an
inadequate base for arguing that Christians are obligated to adhere
to its precepts’ (p. 199). He maintains that, when Paul speaks of
Christians’ fulfilling the law (he refers to Rom. 8.4; 13.8-10 and
Gal. 5.14), he ‘is describing, not prescribing, Christian behavior’
(p. 201). According to Westerholm, what Paul is doing is not
indicating the duty of Christians to try to fulfil the law, not setting
before them an imperative, but making the claim that Christians
do as a matter of fact fulfil the law. When he was describing ‘a life
lived in conformity with Christian principles’, it was, ‘for polemical
reasons, important for him to say that Christian behavior is
condemned by no law (Gal. 5.23), that the love which is the
hallmark of Christian conduct in fact fulfills the law (Gal. 5.14;
Rom. 13.8-10)’ (pp. 201-2). On p. 219 Westerholm can actually
speak of this claim which he thinks Paul is making as ‘one-
upmanship’ on Paul’s part.

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But the tva in Romans 8.4 is surely extremely significant. Paul

is indicating that one purpose of God’s saving deed in Christ
was that the law’s dtxatwmua (I take the word to mean here
‘righteous requirement’) might be fulfilled in us by our walking
not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. In v. 9a
Paul uses the indicative. A process of sanctification is indeed going
on in every Christian, but the 61a Guagtiav in v. 10 would seem
to imply that Christians are still sinners. We take it that the
fulfilment spoken of in v. 4 is only begun, not something
completed. That the implication of this passage is therefore that
Christians must strive ever to move in the direction of the law’s
righteous requirement’s being fulfilled in their lives seems to me
clear enough.
In Romans 13.8—10 Paul speaks about the debitum immortale,
the debt of love which we can never be finished with discharging.
The point of v. 8b could be to state a reason for loving one another:
to do so is to fulfil the law. More probably, I think, it is to be
understood as explaining why the debt of love can never be fully
discharged: it cannot be fully discharged, for, if there were people
who really and truly and in the fullest sense loved their neighbours,
they would have done what Paul in Romans 1.18—3.20 has shown
to be altogether beyond the reach of Jews and Gentiles alike — they
would have fulfilled the law. Paul goes on to indicate that the
particular commandments of the ‘second table’ of the Decalogue
are all summed up in the commandment of Leviticus 19.18, ‘thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’, and to state that love is the
fulfilling of the law. But, since Paul was apparently well aware that
Christians can very easily persuade themselves that they are loving
when they are not (note that twice in his surviving letters he uses
the word GvumOxottos with reference to love — in Romans 12.9
and 2 Corinthians 6.6), it seems most unlikely that he would have
countenanced the idea that Christians should forget the particular
commandments and rely on the commandment of love as a
sufficient guide. Is it not more likely that he recognized that, while
Christians certainly need the summary to save them from missing
the wood for the trees and from understanding the particular com-
mandments in a rigid, literalistic, unimaginative or loveless way,

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they also need the particular commandments to save them from

resting content with vague and often hypocritical sentiments,
which — in ourselves and quite often even in other people — we are
all of us prone to mistake for Christian love??
What has just been said with reference to Romans 13.8—10 may
also serve as a comment on the third passage (Gal. 5.14). But the
fact that ‘thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’, contained in
both Romans 13.9 and Galatians 5.14, is not a novel Christian
insight but the law’s own summary of its requirements with regard
to human relations must not be forgotten. To deny that this is
clear evidence that Paul saw the law as having a continuing validity
for Christians strikes me as exceedingly perverse. Paul no doubt
did believe that ‘Christian love inevitably meets the standards
set by the law’ (p. 202) — if by ‘Christian love’ is meant perfect
Christian love. But did he think that such perfect love was
anywhere to be seen in the church on earth? I find it impossible to
believe that the man who wrote Romans 1.18—3.20 had a ‘retro-
spective’ (p. 202) view, when he quoted Leviticus 19.18 (or, for
that matter, the specific commandments also quoted in Rom. 13.9),
and thought he was describing the actual conduct of Christians,
not setting before them the goal towards which they have to strive
lifelong.
Again, I am puzzled by p. 203, on which Westerholm seems to
be suggesting that Paul thought (note the bold ‘undoubtedly’ at
the top of the page!) that Christians are like the ‘accomplished’ or
‘consummate’ musician who has advanced beyond the stage of
having to submit to the discipline of the elementary rules of music
and now ‘“fulfills” the intention of the rules without always
observing them’ (p. 203). He claims that ‘In a similar way, Paul can
only believe that a life directed by God’s Holy Spirit more than
adequately “fulfills” the requirements of the law, even though
specific demands have not been “done” and commands that are
perceived to serve a purpose no longer have been ignored’ (p. 203),
and on p. 205 he actually states that ‘For Paul it is important to say

Cf. C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to

the Romans 2, Edinburgh, °1989, p. 679.

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Has THE OLD TESTAMENT Law A PLACE IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE?

that Christians “fulfill” the whole law, and thus to claim that their
conduct (and theirs alone) fully satisfies the “real” purport of the
law in its entirety ...’. But is it conceivable that Paul, who was
familiar with the law’s own summary of its requirements, ‘thou
shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy might’ (Deut. 6.5) and ‘thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself? (Lev. 19.18), could have thought that he
himself or any of his fellow-Christians was in a position to claim
that he ‘more than adequately’ fulfilled the law’s requirements (p.
203), satisfied them ‘completely’ (p. 204), fulfilled ‘the whole law’
(p. 205), or that his conduct ‘fully’ satisfied ‘the “real” purport of
the law in its entirety’ (p. 205)?
In this section Westerholm makes a lot of the distinction in
usage which he sees between mANQOUV and moteiv. This should, I
think, be viewed with a considerable amount of caution. Would it
not anyway have been more illuminating to have made the point
that Paul can use ZANQEOUV with vouov (or equivalent) both to
denote the perfect obedience to the law which only Jesus has
actually accomplished, and also to denote those beginnings of being
turned in the direction of obedience which believers make in the
freedom the Holy Spirit gives them?

I
In the third section of the chapter Westerholm attempts to estab-
lish the third position listed on p. 199 (‘Paul consistently argues
and assumes that Christians are no longer bound by the Mosaic
code’). He claims at the start that ‘the evidence that he [that
is, Paul] believed Christians are free from the law is both explicit
and abundant’ (p. 205). It will be necessary first to look at the
evidence he brings forward and then to look at some things
which he does not mention, which seem to point to a different
conclusion.
Westerholm appeals first to Romans 6.14f and 1 Corinthians
9.20; but, as it should not be assumed that U0 VOLOV is used in
the same way in both passages, we may look first at the Romans
passage together with Romans 7.1—6 to which Westerholm refers

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on pp. 206-7. I have argued elsewhere’ that in Romans 6.14b (‘for

ye are not under law, but under grace’) Paul is thinking not of the
law generally but of the law as condemning sinners, so of the law’s
condemnation. There seem to me to be a number of grounds for
thinking this. First, the contrast between ‘under law’ (or probably
better ‘under the law’) and ‘under grace’ can be said to support this
explanation, since ‘under God’s condemnation’ is a natural
opposite to ‘under grace’ (i.e. God’s grace or undeserved favour).
Secondly, an assurance that Christians have been freed from God’s
condemnation seems a more apposite support (note the ‘for’ at the
beginning of v. 14b) for the promise that sin shall no longer be lord
over them than an assurance that they are altogether free from the
law would be: confidence that one has been released from God’s
condemnation does indeed enable one to begin to resist sin’s
tyranny with courage and hopefulness. Thirdly, Romans 8.1
(‘There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in
Christ Jesus’) is surely strong support for this interpretation of ov
... UO VOUOV in 6.14, since it indicates that the point of 7.16,
the significance of which it draws out (Gea viv), 7.7-25 being
parenthetic, is the Christian’s freedom from the law’s condem-
nation, not from the law generally, and 7.1—6 seems to be naturally
understood as connecting with 6.14b.
With regard to 1 Corinthians 9.20, it seems to me that the
context suggests that Paul is here indicating not that he is not under
the law at all, that it no longer has any validity for him, but that he
is not under it in ‘the same way as he had once been and as the
non-Christian Jews are under it. Paul certainly recognized that
there are very significant differences between the relation of
Christians to the law and the relation of non-Christian Jews to it.
Some of these will be noticed in the course of this essay. But one is
particularly relevant here. Whereas for the non-Christian Jew the
literal observance of the ceremonial law is still obligatory, the
Christian, who knows that the One, to whom all along the law was
pointing, has come and has accomplished his saving work, no
longer has to observe it literally. (The word ‘literally’ in the last

3 Op. cit. 1, 71990, pp. 319-20.

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sentence is important; for what is being suggested is not (pace

Westerholm, e.g. pp. 200, 202, 203) that the ceremonial law has
simply been abrogated and that the Christian should just ignore it,
but that he should honour it by looking steadfastly in the direction
in which it was all along pointing and by believing in Christ as he
and his work are witnessed to by it.) But not all Christians under-
stood this, and there were painful tensions in the church. Some
insisted that all Christians must, for example, be circumcised, and
their demands Paul strongly opposed. But there were others, who,
while not trying to compel their fellow-Christians to follow their
pattern, felt that, as far as they themselves were concerned, they
could not with a clear conscience give up the observance of such
requirements of the law as the distinction between clean and
unclean foods, the avoidance of blood, the keeping of the Sabbath.
Yet they were liable to give way to the social pressure of those of
their fellow-Christians who were confident that they had this
freedom, to the grievous detriment of their own integrity. Paul
recognized their vulnerability, and was sensitive to it, as can be
seen in Romans 14.1—15.13. Paul seems also to have tried to avoid
giving unnecessary offence to non-Christian Jews, in connection
with the ceremonial law. In view of what has just been said
(perhaps also in view of the words un @v G&vopos BEot GAN
EVVOWUOS XOLOTON in v. 21?), it would seem to be unwise to claim
1 Corinthians 9.20 as clear evidence that Paul thought that the law
as a whole was no longer valid for him.
On p. 206 Westerholm claims that ‘ye were made dead to the
law through the body of Christ’ in Romans 7.4 ‘clearly includes
release from the law’s demands’. But is this at all clear? Is it not
more natural, in view of what Paul has said about Christians’ dying
with Christ in 6.1—11, and of what he had already said about the
meaning of Christ’s death in 3.21—26; 4.25; 5.6-11, 18-19, to take
him to be referring to release from the law’s condemnation through
Christ’s death for them?
With regard to Galatians 2.17—19, the exegetical problems
involved are complicated, and there is far from being agreement
about the thread of Paul’s argument. If one sees a close connection
between vv. 15—21 and vv. 11—14, in which Paul has related his

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public dispute with Peter in Antioch, one might well be inclined to

think that the death to the law referred to in v. 19 has simply to do
with observation of the ceremonial part of the law. The second and
third clauses of vv. 19 and 20 might perhaps suggest that it is rather
death to the law’s condemnation. That Paul means death to the law
generally is maintained by many; but it seems to me that this
passage, taken by itself, provides a very insecure basis for holding
that Paul saw the law as having no longer any validity for him.
Westerholm goes on to appeal to Galatians 3.19—-4.5 as showing
‘the temporal limitations on the law’s validity’ (p. 207). That Paul
did indeed believe that there is a sense in which ‘the epoch of the
law has passed’ may be readily agreed. We can speak of ‘Old
Testament times’ or ‘the Old Testament epoch’ as of a period that
is over and past, without implying that the Old Testament is no
longer authoritative scripture for the Christian church. With the
accomplishment of Jesus Christ’s work the epoch of the law’s
unique authority had indeed come to an end; but it does not
follow that the law had ceased to have validity for those who believe
in him. Commandments like ‘thou shalt have none other gods
before me’, ‘thou shalt do no murder’, ‘thou shalt not bear false
witness against thy neighbour’, ‘thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself’, did not cease to point the way to freedom and community
and fulfilment, though they could now be more clearly recognized
as God’s fatherly guidance for his children. But Paul certainly
thought that the relation of Christians to the law was very
significantly different from that of non-Christian Jews to it.
Westerholm seems to say (p. 208) that, if Paul accepted that
observance of the ritual law was no longer binding on Christians,
he cannot have regarded any part of the law as binding on them,
because, if he had, he would have felt the need to ‘provide his
churches with detailed instructions as to which commands they
were obligated to observe and which they were not’ and ‘there is
no evidence that he made any such distinctions. On the contrary,
it is clear that, for Paul, Torah was a unit’ (p. 208). But must
not the distinction between ritual and moral have been clear to
Paul? Is not Romans 7.7—25 illuminating in this connection? And
Westerholm’s argument from silence, from the absence of such

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detailed instructions as he refers to in the Pauline letters we

possess, is surely precarious.
The further argument from 1 Corinthians 6.12ff and 10.23ff
that ‘Both the slogan itself [tavta (uot) €Egotiv] and Paul’s
non-legal way of qualifying it clearly indicate that the Christian is
not thought to be obligated to observe the demands of the law’ (p.
208) is scarcely cogent. Paul’s quotation of the Corinthian liber-
tines’ slogan is not an unqualified endorsement of it, and the
conclusion which Westerholm draws from the fact that Paul does
not here appeal to any of the law’s commands is by no means
necessary. The specific commandments of the law are a guide for
the gratitude of those who already know their indebtedness to God
(cf. Exod. 20.2; Deut. 5.6); they are not themselves the ground of
the believer’s desire to obey them. The fact that Paul does not here
adduce any commandments (in 1 Cor. 6.20 — ‘ye were bought with
a price’ — he appeals to what is more basic than God’s commands),
does not at all prove that he did not think that the law still had
validity for Christians.
Westerholm’s final argument in this section is that Paul sees
Christians as having to ‘discover’ the will of God ‘for themselves as
their mind is “renewed” and they grow in insight’ (he appeals to
Rom. 6.22; 12.2; Phil. 1.9-10), instead of relying on the guidance
of the law, and that this ‘shows clearly that the will of God is no
longer defined as an obligation to observe the law’s statutes’ (p.
209). But, in answer to this, it may be said that use of the renewed
mind and acceptance of the law’s continuing validity are in no way
incompatible, that Westerholm has already distorted the evidence
by his treatment of the ‘fulfilment’ passages, Romans 8.4; 13.8—10;
Galatians 5.14; and that such language as he has used in the
last-quoted sentence is liable to give a very false impression of the
position of those Christians who do think that the law has a
continuing validity for them, suggesting, as it does, a wooden
_ observance of the law’s letter rather than a free and joyful aiming
at its intention.
Some things which seem to me to be positive support for the
view that Paul believed that the law still has a place in the life of
Christians must now be mentioned. There is first the fact that he

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calls it God’s law (Rom. 7.22, 25; 8.7: cf. (pace Westerholm, p.
201, n. 11) 1 Cor. 7.19): this is surely important. Must we not
assume, unless there is quite conclusive evidence to the contrary,
that Paul, if he recognized that the law was God’s, is likely to have
seen it as still valid for Christians? Secondly, there is the striking
affirmation in Romans 7.12, ‘So that the law is holy, and the
commandment holy, and righteous, and good’, to which
Westerholm fails to pay the attention it deserves. I take it that Paul
is affirming that both the law as a whole and its individual
commandments are God’s, that they are righteous both as directing
human beings to try to act righteously and as manifesting God’s
own righteousness, and that they are intended to be beneficial to
human beings. Is not this verse a very serious difficulty for those
who maintain that Paul thought that the law no longer had any
validity for Christians? Thirdly, his statement in Romans 7.14 that
the law is ‘spiritual’ must be mentioned. It is surely an affirmation
of its divine origin and by implication of its divine authority.
Fourthly, Romans 7.14—25 as a whole must be mentioned; for, if
those verses refer to the Christian life, as I am still convinced that
they do,* they would seem to be strong support for the view that
Paul saw a continuing role for the law in the church. For in this
passage the law is depicted as guiding the obedience of the new ego
which God is creating (note especially v. 25b). Fifthly, Romans
8.7 should be noted, since it seems to imply that those ‘that are
after the Spirit’ should strive to be — and in some measure can be —
‘subject to the law of God’, in contrast with those whose life is
characterized by ‘the mind of the flesh’.
Sixthly, Paul’s assertion in 1 Corinthians 7.19 that it is not
circumcision or uncircumcision that matters ‘but the keeping
of the commandments of God’ seems highly - significant.
Westerholm’s contention (p. 201, n. 11) that by ‘the command-
ments of God’ Paul does not mean the commandments of the
law, since ‘the Mosaic law is not ... in view in this chapter
(the only “commandments” mentioned are Pauline and dominical;

* Pace N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline
Theology, Edinburgh, 1991, pp. 196-225.

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cf. vv. 10, 17, 25, and the frequent Pauline imperatives)’, is un-
convincing. Would Paul really be likely to refer to his own or
indeed dominical commandments as EvtoAai Neot? And, if the
commandments of the law are meant, the use of the word thenots
is significant. Does it not indicate that Paul was not under the
illusion that Christians no longer need to try to obey the law? But
a comparison of the parallel statements in Galatians 5.6 and 6.15
is illuminating. For the mtotuc dv ayamys EveogyouuEevy of the
former indicates something of what Paul understood to be involved
in keeping the commandments of God, while the xatvn xtlows of
the latter is a reminder that it is only as the Holy Spirit creates a
new self in a human being that he or she is freed to begin to obey
God’s law.
Seventhly, there is the fact that the legislative elements of the
Pentateuch were an integral part of what Paul knew and reverenced
as Scripture. Westerholm, while accepting that Paul can use VOWOG
of the Pentateuch as a whole (e.g. in the phrase ‘the law and the
prophets’ in Rom. 3.21) and also of the Old Testament as a whole
(e.g. in Rom. 3.19; 1 Cor. 14.21), insists that vOuoc ‘in Paul’s
writings frequently (indeed, most frequently) refers to the sum of
specific divine requirements given to Israel through Moses’ (p.
108). But, while a verse like Galatians 3.17, which refers to the
four hundred and thirty years between the making of the covenant
and the giving of the law, makes it clear that Paul was aware of the
different senses vOuwoc could have, have we really any justification
for supposing that he thought of the law in this narrowest sense as
something which could now be separated from its context in
Scripture and assigned a value inferior to that of the rest of the
Pentateuch? But, if he did regard it as an integral part of Scripture,
we shall not arrive at a genuine solution to the problem of Paul’s
view of the law (in Westerholm’s narrowest sense of the term) until
we try to understand it within, rather than outwith, the framework
of his view of the nature and authority of the Old Testament
scriptures as a whole.
What has been said above seems to me to suggest strongly that
Westerholm was much too quick to conclude that, for Paul, the
law no longer has validity for Christians.

i ed
On ROMANS

il
I turn now to the fourth section of Chapter X (headed “The Letter
and the Spirit’).> The position it seeks to maintain was indicated
on p. 199 thus: ‘The mark of Christian ethics is life in the Spirit,
an ethic which Paul explicitly contrasts with obligation to the law.’
About the decisive importance of the Holy Spirit’s part in the
Christian life as Paul understood it there can, of course, be no
doubt. It is the Holy Spirit who brings about the sanctification of
believers. But it does not follow from this that Paul must have
regarded ‘walking in the Spirit’ (so Westerholm, p. 214) or walking
by the Spirit (cf. Gal. 5.16) as ‘an ethical norm replacing the law’
(p. 214). Paul knew the painful truth that Christians, though
indeed indwelt by God’s Spirit, do not always walk by the Spirit
but often resist him and walk according to their own fallen human
nature. He knew that they can be poor judges of the relative values
of the various spiritual gifts, esteeming the showy and exciting ones
above the more precious. He knew too that Christians are liable to
be complacent, confident that they are already rich, already reign-
ing (1 Cor. 4.8). In view of this I should need a lot of convincing
that Paul could have thought of walking by the Spirit as an ethical
norm replacing the law. Is not the Christian’s experience of the
Spirit something too individual, too liable to be mixed with the
Christian’s subjective thoughts, feelings, desires, to be a satis-
factory ethical norm? The fact that Paul wanted the Corinthian
Christians to learn ‘not to go beyond the things which are written’
(1 Cor. 4.6) and the fact that he has left us clear evidence of his
own deep and constant engagement with the Old Testament
scriptures lead me to think it much more likely that he regarded
the law and, along with it, the rest of the Old Testament and also
the tradition of the ministry and teaching of Jesus as the proper
norm and standard of Christian conduct, a standard open and
common to all believers, something objective, and that he thought
of the Holy Spirit as the One who enables Christians rightly to

5 See also Westerholm’s article, ‘“Letter” and “Spirit”: the foundation of

Pauline Ethics’, in NTS 30 (1984), pp. 229-48.

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understand the scriptures and the Jesus tradition and sets them
free to begin to obey.
In his discussion of the letter—Spirit antithesis (pp. 209-13)
he deals with Romans 2.27 (strangely, he ignores, apart from a foot-
note, 2.29, though it is in that verse and not in v. 27 that
yooupa and mvetua actually occur together); Romans 7.6; and 2
Corinthians 3.6. Throughout this discussion he persists in
attributing to those scholars, who believe that the Old Testament
law still has a validity for Christians, an inclination to take yooupa
in these passages to mean a misunderstanding or a perversion
of the law. There is an element of truth in this, and yet it is mis-
leading and has the effect of setting up a straw man which can
then be demolished without trouble. For a simple equation,
yodauua = ‘a misunderstanding or a perversion of the law’, clearly
will not do. Had Westerholm read the passage® he quotes as
representative of the view he is attacking and also its context more
carefully, he might have recognized that its author was not
suggesting quite so simplistic and unthought-through a solution as
he supposes. Its author was, in fact, trying — however inadequately
— to do justice both to the fact that oidauev ... 6tL O VOWOG
TVEVUATLXOS EOTLV (Rom. 7.14) makes it extremely unlikely that
Paul could intend a simple opposition between the Spirit and the
law (so that a straight identification of yoauua with the law is
unsatisfactory) and also to the fact that YoOuUoa must indeed refer
to the law itself. He therefore tried to suggest that, while yeaupa
certainly refers to the law itself, it denotes the law itself as it is
apart from that full and true effectiveness which it only possesses,
when the Holy Spirit enables those who hear it truly to understand
it in the light of Jesus Christ, and frees them to make a beginning
of obeying it.
Westerholm, by contrast, understands Paul to use YOaUUG to
indicate the obligation on those under the law to obey it. So, with
reference to Romans 7.6, he says: ‘serving God by the “letter” must
refer to the obligation of those subject to the old covenant to carry
out the concrete commands of the law of God’ (p. 212); and, with

~ 6 Cranfield, op. cit. 1, pp. 339-40.

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reference to the three texts, Romans 2.27; 7.6; and 2 Corinthians

3.6, he says: ‘Paul means seriously that those who lived under the
law were obligated to fulfill the “letter”; indeed, the purpose of the
law could only be achieved if those who were under its yoke were
bound to observe its terms ... Now, however, the way of the
“letter” (i.e. obedience to the law) has become, for believers, a thing
of the past; service is now rendered “in the new life of the Spirit”
(Rom. 7.6)’ (p. 213).
But in reply to Westerholm it must be said that the contrast
Paul has in mind is not a contrast between a life lived under the
obligation to try to obey the law and a life in which that obligation
has been replaced by the guidance of the Spirit, but rather a
contrast between the life of those, who, though possessing the law,
have not yet been enabled by the Holy Spirit rightly to understand
it in the light of Christ, and the life of those whom the Holy Spirit
has both enabled to understand the law aright in the light of Jesus
Christ and also set free to make a beginning of trying to obey it
with humble joy.
With regard to the last section of Chapter X (“The Origin of
Paul’s View’), it seems to me that the sentence, ‘Furthermore, since
the law’s demands cannot be detached from its sanctions,
deliverance from the law’s curse inevitably means freedom from
its demands as well’ (pp. 217f) is plainly fallacious. By what logic is
it claimed that the law’s demands cannot be detached from its
sanctions? By what logic is it asserted that deliverance from the
law’s curse inevitably means freedom from its commands as well?

IV
In conclusion three brief observations may be made.

1. Westerholm seems inclined to assume that Paul must either

have regarded the law as having no place in the Christian life or
else have continued to find the will of God in it ‘in the way he did
as a Pharisee’ (p. 214). But surely tertium datur! We may conclude
that he continued to find the will of God in it, but did so now in a
new and distinctively Christian way. It is of the utmost importance

bez
Has THE OLD TESTAMENT Law A PLACE IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE?

that we do not underestimate the newness of the Christian’s

understanding of, and relation to, the law. He understands it in the
light of Christ, in the light of his perfect obedience to it and of his
clarification of its intention by his life and work and teaching. He
has been freed from the illusion that he is able so well to fulfil it as
to put God in his debt. He knows that, while it shows him the
depth of his sinfulness, it no longer pronounces God’s condem-
nation of him, since Christ has borne that condemnation for him.
He no longer feels its commands simply as an obligation imposed
on him from without, but is being set free by the Holy Spirit to
desire wholeheartedly to try to obey and thereby to express his
gratitude to God for his mercy and generosity. So he receives the
law’s commands as God’s fatherly guidance for his children — not
as a burden or an infringement of his liberty, but as the pointing
out of the way to true freedom.
2. Westerholm seems to me to have failed to make any serious
effort to understand the view of the law, which has been charac-
teristic of, but by no means confined to, the Reformed churches
and Reformed theology. It is noticeable that in his book Calvin
gets not a single mention and Barth, I think, but half a line- The
importance attached to the Decalogue in Christian education by
such Reformed catechisms as the Geneva of 1541, the Heidelberg
of 1563, the Westminster Larger and Shorter of 1648, is well
known.’ And in this matter of the place of the law in the life of
Christians the Church of England has stood alongside the
Reformed churches, as may be seen from the fact that in the 1662
Book of Common Prayer (as also in the 1552 Prayer Book) the
rehearsing of the Ten Commandments has its place in the order of
the Lord’s Supper (note the repeated response, ‘Lord, have mercy
upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law’), while both in
Rite A and in Rite B of the Alternative Service Book of 1980
provision is made for either the Summary of the Law (itself, of

7 An interesting recent example is J. M. Lochman, Signposts to Freedom: the

Ten Commandments and Christian ethics, Belfast, Dublin, Ottawa, 1981 (English
translation by David Lewis of Wegweisung der Frethett: Abriss der Ethtk in der
Perspektive des Dekalogs, Giitersloh, 1979).

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course, including two quotations from the law) or the Ten

Commandments to be read. The view that Paul saw the law as
having a continuing role in the life of Christians deserves a more
sympathetic and careful consideration than Westerholm has given
it.
3. Itis perhaps wise to add — though it should surely go without
saying — that to argue that the Old Testament law has a continuing
validity in the Christian church does not at all mean that one
ignores the great diversity of the materials which make it up (to
treat them as a homogeneous code would, of course, be absurd) or
denies the need for properly rigorous critical and historical study
of it. It is possible to recognize that the law, like every other part of
the Old Testament and also of the New, is from beginning to end
the words of men and at the same time to take it seriously as God’s
law.®

* I tried to say something on the subject touched on in this paragraph in ‘St

Paul and the Law’, in S7T 17 (1964), p. 67; but this was omitted for the sake of
brevity in my ICC Romans 2 (cited above), p. 861.

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 10

Who Are Christ’s Brothers

(Matthew 25.40)?

The question of the identity of those referred to in Matthew 25.40,

45 as Christ’s ‘brothers’ is not just a matter of academic interest. It
is vitally important for the faith and life of the Christian church.
Discussion of it has recently been re-opened by the publication in
1989 of Sherman W. Gray’s The Least of My Brothers: Matthew
25.31—46: A History of Interpretation, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
(Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 114). Its first 351
pages are a remarkably comprehensive survey of the support over
the centuries, from the end of the first century aD down to 1986,
for the different answers given to this question and to the related
question of the meaning of‘all the nations’ in v. 32. This historical |
part of the book is very fully documented and has been written
with admirable fairness and objectivity.

I
The results of Gray’s historical study may be briefly summarized
as follows.
In the patristic period, of the 504 references to the ‘identity
dialogue’ (vv. 35-40, 42-45) investigated, 62% give no indication
as to the identity of Christ’s brothers, 33% restrict them to the
Christian needy, and only 5% explicitly or implicitly include
non-Christians among them. With regard to the meaning of ‘all

* First published in Metanoza 4 (1994), pp. 31-39.

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the nations’, of the 114 Fathers investigated over 82% do not

discuss the matter, fourteen witnesses support a universal inter-
pretation, and six understand only Christians to be intended. In
the Middle Ages (defined as 850-1399) the overwhelming majority
of commentators restrict the brothers to Christians. Only four out
of the twenty-one authors who comment on vv. 40 and 45 give any
support to a non-restrictive view. The majority take ‘all the nations’
to mean all human beings, while a minority understand only
Christians to be meant. In the period of the Renaissance and
Reformation (1400—1699) out of the thirty-six authors commenting
on vv. 40 and 45 twenty-nine take the brothers to be Christians
and only five are definitely universalist. There is a near-consensus
that ‘all the nations’ means everyone.
In the modern period the restrictive understanding of the
brothers continues to dominate throughout the eighteenth century,
sixteen out of twenty-three commentators identifying them as
Christians and no commentator taking an explicitly universalist
view. Fifteen interpreted ‘all the nations’ as meaning everyone; but
for the first time the suggestion appears that the phrase means
neither everyone nor Christians but all the heathen. The nine-
teenth century shows a considerable increase in suppert for the
universalist view of the brothers, though the restrictive under-
standing 1s still predominant. At the same time, while the great
majority of authors take ‘all the nations’ to mean all human-
kind, over 8% take it to mean all the heathen (i.e. all who are
neither Christians nor Jews) and almost 10% all non-Christians
(including Jews). In the twentieth century supporters of a non-
restrictive view of the brothers (i.e. those understanding the
needy generally together with those who do not indicate any
restriction) for the first time outnumber those who support a
restrictive sense, and, even when the neutrals are excluded, the
explicit universalists still outnumber those who restrict the
brothers to Christians (some premillennialists restrict not to
Christians but to Jewish missionaries during ‘the tribulation’).
With regard to ‘all the nations’, nearly 65% of the authors
investigated take it to mean all humankind, about 12% all who
are neither Christians nor Jews, nearly 7% all non-Christians

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 WHo Ar_E Curist’s BRoTHERS (MATTHEW 25.40)?

(so including Jews), a little over 8% only Christians, and 2% all

non-Jews.
Whereas the first three periods furnished only 178 com-
mentators on this pericope, in the modern period Gray found 736
authors (in over 800 works) with something to say on the subject.
With regard to the identity of the brothers, of the 1409 references
in all four periods together, 765 or close to 55% are neutral or non-
restrictive. Throughout the centuries the narrow interpretation has
the next strongest showing (almost 39%). The explicitly universal
interpretation, though not seen in the second or the eighteenth
century, is found in each of the four periods, and in the twentieth
century becomes a close rival to the narrow view. With regard to
‘all the nations’, the majority opinion in all four periods is that it
means all human beings. The only other view represented in all
four periods is that Christians are meant. It is only in the modern
period that the other views make their appearance: that the
meaning is all non-Christians; that it is all who are neither
Christians nor Jews; that it is all non-Jews.
Gray’s historical study deserves to be warmly welcomed as
an important and interesting contribution to New Testament
scholarship. The accompanying bibliography is itself of great value
(pp. 365-432). But his statement (pp. 351—64) of his own position
on the exegesis of this passage (that the reference in vv. 40 and 45
is to Christians and that by ‘all the nations’ in v. 32 all non-
Christians (including Jews) are meant) leaves us unconvinced.
Since a strongly argued chapter (‘Once More: Matthew 25.3146’)
in Graham N. Stanton’s impressive A Gospel-for a New People:
Studies in Matthew, Edinbugh, 1992, pp. 207-31, has come out
firmly on Gray’s side, we may consider the arguments, which these
two authors advance, together.

i
We take first the arguments in support of the view that those to
whom vv. 40 and 45 refer (‘the least of these my brethren’ and ‘the
least of these’) are Christians.

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(i) It is claimed that ‘brother’ (&6eA.@Oc) is firmly established

in Matthew as a term for ‘Christian disciple’ (Gray, p. 357;
Stanton, p. 216). That it can be so used is clear; but the
evidence is far from proving that it is used in this way in
Matthew 25.40. There are thirty-nine occurrences of
&eA@oc in Matthew. In twenty-one of these the word is
used in its ordinary literal sense as in 4.18. Of the remaining
eighteen occurrences there are eight in which it does
denote a disciple: 12.48, 49, 50; 18.15 (twice), 21; 23.8; 28.10.
In four of these (as in 25.40) a possessive is present (‘my
brother(s)’). But in 5.22 (twice), 23, 24; 7.3, 4, 5 GdeAMoc
seems to mean ‘neighbour’, ‘fellow Israelite’. In 18.35
‘neighbour’ or ‘fellow man’ seems to be the meaning (cf.
6.1415, where ‘men’ (ot &vOQWz01) is used). In 5.47 the
meaning of the word is uncertain: the evangelist could
perhaps have in mind the members of the Christian com-
munity, but a reference to kinsfolk or to those who are fellow
members of some other group would also seem to be possible
(there is a variant reading which means ‘friends’). The above
evidence, while it certainly affords support for the view that
the possibility that 25.40 may refer to Christians must be
reckoned with, hardly goes further than this.
(ii) It is claimed that ‘the least’ (ol EXGyLOTOL) is firmly
established as a term for Christian disciples (Stanton, p.
216). Gray (p. 357) asserts that J. Winandy ‘convincingly
shows that whenever Jesus speaks of “little ones” or “the
least”, he refers to his disciples’. It is true that ‘one of these
little ones’ occurs four times in Matthew (10.42; 18.6, 10,
14), and that each time Jesus is referring to his disciples (in
one case the phrase is completed by ‘that believe in me’).
But, even if we admit that the four occurrences of ‘these
little ones’ are enough to make ‘little one’ (utxQdc) an
established term for ‘disciple’ in Matthew, it is by no means
clear that this also goes for the superlative €Adytotoc. It
occurs five times in Matthew. It is used of Bethlehem in
2.5 (‘by no means least among the rulers of Judah’) and
twice in 5.19 (‘one of the least of these commandments’

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 Who Are Curist’s BRoTHERS (MATTHEW 25.40)?

and ‘shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven’): the

two other occurrences are 25.40 and 45. The list of its
occurrences in Matthew would seem to be enough to
disprove the claim that ol €A\G@xLOTOL is an established term
for the disciples in Matthew. It may be suggested that the
purpose ofits use in 25.40 and 45 is not to insure that ‘my
brothers’ is understood to mean Christians but to insure
that it is understood in the widest possible sense — even the
most insignificant and most abject are included.
(iii) It is claimed that Jesus’ identifying himself with his
disciples in Matthew 10.40 (‘He who receives you receives
me’) is support for taking 25.40 and 45 to refer to Christians
(Stanton, pp. 217-18). The same identification is made in
Acts 9.4—5; 22.7-8; 26.14-15. There is no need to doubt
that Jesus did identify himself with his disciples. But the
fact that he did so is not a good reason for denying that he
could also on occasion have identified himself with human
beings generally in their neediness.
(iv) For Stanton it is significant (pp. 210—11) that, if the narrow
interpretation of vv. 40 and 45 is taken (and ‘all the nations’
understood as meaning all non-Christians), the passage
‘reflects the social setting of Matthew’s gospel which is
envisaged’ in his book. He understands it as ‘intended to
console anxious Christians who perceive themselves to be
threatened both by the local Jewish leadership and by
Gentile society at large’. But if the social setting of the
gospel was as Stanton believes — and we find much of his
book convincing — it still does not necessarily follow that
the evangelist must have thought that the best way to
console his fellow Christians was to assure them that in the
final judgment their non-Christian neighbours’ treatment
of them would be the criterion by which those non-
Christians would be judged.
(v) Stanton relies heavily on the characterization of Matthew
25.3146 as ‘an apocalyptic discourse’ (p. 221). He claims
that ‘Since apocalyptic writings usually function as a con-
solation to groups of God’s people who perceive themselves

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to be under threat or alienated from the society in which

they live, this is likely to be the central thrust of Matt.
25.3146’ (p. 222), and goes on to assert: “The relation-
ship between Matthew 25 and apocalyptic writings which
were also written towards the end of the first century
strengthens considerably the interpretation of Matthew’s
final judgment scene which I am defending’ (p. 223). He
then (pp. 224-8) quotes extensively from 4 Ezra (4.23;
7.37—38: he also cites 5.23—30; 6.57—59; 12.31—33; 13.37);
2 Baruch (72.2—73.1); and 1 Enoch (62.3, 9-12; 103.9-15;
104.1-4), after first quoting Joel 3.1—-3, which he regards as
the Jocus classicus for the apocalyptic motif he is concerned
with, namely, the coming judgment of the nations on the
basis of their treatment of God’s people. That this motif
is illustrated in these writings is, of course, true. But what
Stanton fails to recognize is that what distinguishes the
Matthew passage from these writings may be more
significant than what connects it with them. For one thing,
is there not a striking contrast between the austere
simplicity, the ‘sobriety of feature and colour’, the ‘reserve’
and even ‘bareness’,' of this passage and what is char-
acteristic of Jewish and indeed Christian apocalypses? And
is it not significant that in Matthew 25.31ff it is to the
blessedness to come to those who had shown compassion
to Christ’s brothers rather than to the punishment to fall
on those who had failed to show compassion that
prominence is given? And also that the distresses referred
to are ones anybody might suffer, not ones which Christians
are particularly likely to suffer because they are Christians,
such as persecution? When the special features of this
passage are taken into account, it becomes apparent how
perilous it is to draw conclusions from the apocalyptic
writings about what ‘is likely to be the central thrust of
Matt. 25.3146’.

' The language is derived from T. Preiss, Life in Christ, London, 1954
(translated from La Vie en Christ, Neuchatel, 1952), p. 47.

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 Wuo ARE Curist’s BROTHERS (MATTHEW 25.40)?

The main argument in favour of taking ‘all the nations’ in v. 32

to mean the non-Christian world, all non-Christians, is that TO
€Ovy (‘the nations’) is never used in Matthew to refer to Christians
or to Christians and non-Christians together, but always refers to
Gentiles over against Christians or Jews (Stanton, p. 214). But this
contention cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged. There are ten
occurrences of ta €8vn in Matthew. In the four of these, in which
it is preceded by mavta (‘all’), that is in 24.9, 14; 28.19, and the
verse we are concerned with, we can see no good reason for denying
that the meaning ts ‘all mankind’. In the case of 24.9 (‘you will be
hated by all nations for my name’s sake’) it is interesting to compare
the wording of 10.22 (‘you will be hated by all for my name’s sake’),
and in 24.14 the fact that ‘to all nations’ is used in association with
‘throughout the whole world’ would seem to tell in favour of its
meaning ‘all humankind’ rather than ‘all non-Christians’. And
in 28.19 too ‘all nations’ surely means ‘all human beings’: the
evangelist is hardly likely to have been so pedantic as to mean to
exclude Christians on the ground that those who are already
disciples do not need to be made disciples. We conclude that this
argument of Stanton and others should be rejected.

Ill
What then can be said in support of understanding Christ’s
‘brothers’ in vv. 40 and 45 as the needy generally and all the
nations’ in v. 32 as meaning all humankind?

(i) The relation of this pericope to its immediate context in

the Eschatological Discourse (chapters 24 and 25) points to
this interpretation. In the latter part of this discourse the
evangelist’s skilful and purposive workmanship is clear to
see. In place of the last five verses of Mark 13 we have in
Matthew fifty-six verses (24.42—25.46). What we get 1s a
powerful exposition of what Jesus’ command to watch
(Mark 13.33, 35, 37) means for the church in the time
before the Parousia. Mathew 24.3 has already underlined
the fact that it is to the disciples, that is, to the church that

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this discourse is addressed. After the call to watch (24.42)

we get the parable of the householder (vv. 43-44); the
parable of the servant who may prove either faithful or
evil (vv. 45-51); the parable of the ten virgins (25.1—14);
the parable of the talents (vv. 14~30); and finally the passage
with which we are concerned. The decision between faith-
fulness and unfaithfulness is the subject of 24.45—51; and
the three pericopae of chapter 25 are closely bound together
by the fact that in each of them there is a decisive separation
of human beings. What we have in all of 24.42—25.46 is
exhortation addressed to disciples, to Christians, so truly
and faithfully to watch for Christ that they may be ready
for him when he comes. To argue that there is a significant
‘break in the thrust of the discourse’ between vv. 30 and
31, on the ground that ‘it is no longer solely Christians who
are being addressed, but men and women in general’, as
Stanton does (p. 222), is unconvincing; for the fact that
‘all the nations’ are mentioned in v. 32 does not imply
that others besides Christians are actually being directly
addressed. To interpret this pericope as intended to console
Christians by assuring them that non-Christians will be
judged on the basis of whether or not they have shown them
kindness is surely to destroy the closely-knit unity of 24.42—
25.46. But to see it as further exhortation, as a further
exposition of what it means to watch — that the watching
required must include recognizing and serving Christ as he
_comes in the meantime in the persons of all needy and
suffering human beings — is to do justice to it as the
fitting climax of the Eschatological Discourse. And, if these
verses are exhortation to Christians to watch properly, then
that must mean that those addressed are to see themselves
among those who are going to be judged: so ‘all the nations’
in vy. 32 must include Christians and cannot denote just the
non-Christian world.
(il) The relation of this pericope to the structure of Matthew
as a whole also points to this interpretation. As the last
paragraph of the Eschatological Discourse, it is also the

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 Who Are Curist’s BRoTHERS (MATTHEW 25.40)?

climax of all the five discourses or collections of Jesus’

teaching in Matthew. How important these are for the
evangelist is clear from the way each of them is marked off
by a careful concluding formula (7.28; 11.1; 13.53; 19.1;
26.1). As each of them is preceded by narrative material or
by a combination of narrative and debate material, the
whole of 3.1—25.46 is Matthew’s account of the deeds and
words ofJesus. So this pericope stands as the climax of that
whole account and immediately precedes the Passion
narrative. Is it likely that the evangelist, who has already
included such teaching as 5.43-48; 6.14f; 18.21-35 and
whose arrangement of his material is careful and purposive,
would place at this point a passage designed to console
Christians by assuring them that non-Christians are
going to be judged at the last according to whether or
not they have been kind to Christians? Would it not be
— for anyone who has followed attentively what has
gone before — an incredible anticlimax? To offer such a
consolation would surely be to reinforce those powerful
tendencies to self-centredness and self-complacency,
against which Christians and the church as a whole have
always to struggle. By contrast, on the interpretation for
which we are arguing, 25.31—46, as a call to Christians to
recognize Christ as he comes to them in the persons of their
suffering fellow human beings, is a fitting culmination of
what has gone before and a not inappropriate prelude to
the narrative of the Passion of him who ‘came not to be
served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for
many’.
(iii) The use of the superlative €AG@xLOTOG (‘least’) in vv. 40 and
45 perhaps tells in favour of taking those referred to as
brothers to be the needy and suffering generally. For, while
its use with regard to this vast multitude of the easily
ignored and forgotten, in order to make the point that not
even one of them, however insignificant, is forgotten by
Christ, is understandable, its use with regard to Christians
would be less easy to understand, since it would be taken

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for granted in the church that all Christians are of value to

Christ.
(iv) If the evangelist thought that those referred to in vv. 40
and 45 must be Christians, it is perhaps surprising that he
has given no hint at all of this. He does not seem to have
felt inhibited from giving editorial interpretative hints
elsewhere (a good example of such a hint is in 21.39,
where he has altered the order of Mark 12.8 (‘they took
him and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard’) to
‘they took him and cast him out of the vineyard, and
killed him’). There is absolutely nothing here to indicate
that it was because they were Christians that these
brothers were hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, sick or in
prison.
(v) Itis clear that, while all the individuals included in ‘all the
nations’, whether we take that phrase to mean all human
beings (which is what we think) or all Gentiles or all non-
Christians, could be assumed to have had some oppor-
tunity to succour a fellow human being in distress, they
could not all be assumed to have had a chance to succour a
Christian in distress. So, if the brothers are limited to
Christians, such a succouring or not succouring could not
be a universally applicable criterion. This seems a strong
ground for understanding the brothers to be the needy
generally.
(vi) The fact that other New Testament references to escha-
tological judgment (e.g. Acts 10.42; 17.31; Rom. 2.16; 3.6;
14.10—12; 2 Cor. 5.10; 1 Pet. 4.5; Rev. 20.11—13) seem to
lend no support to the idea of a judgment which excludes
Christians is an argument for rejecting the view that ‘all the
nations’ in v. 32 means non-Christians.
We conclude that, at any rate as far as the evangelist’s intention
is concerned,’ it is the needy and suffering of this world generally

* In this essay I have concentrated on the evangelist’s understanding of this

passage. I have done so, because I recognize that exegesis has to start with the
evangelist’s intention, not because I am not interested in whether we have Jesus’

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 WuHo Are Cureist’s BRoTHERS (MATTHEW 25.40)?

who are referred to in this passage as Christ’s brothers and ‘all the
nations’ means all humankind including Christians. The passage is
exhortation addressed to Christians. It continues the exposition of
the meaning of the watching commanded in 24.42. It discloses the
mystery of the presence of Christ in the time before the Parousia in
the persons of the least of his brothers and sisters. In this judgment
scene the righteous and the unrighteous alike are depicted as not
having known who it was with whom they had had to do. But the
purpose of the passage is that those who are being addressed may
not remain ignorant of the mystery, but may recognize their King
as he comes to them now in the persons of their suffering fellow
human beings and render him loving service.

own teaching here. I do, as a matter of fact, think that we are very close to Jesus
himself in this passage; but to try to show that this is so is outside the purpose of
this essay. For a more expository treatment of this passage I might refer to a
Cambridge University sermon published in London Quarterly and Holborn
Review 186 (1961), pp. 275-81, reprinted in my Jf God befor us: a collection of
sermons, Edinburgh, 1985, pp. 97-111.

135
 1]

The Resurrection
of Jesus Christ

About the importance accorded to the resurrection of Jesus Christ

in the New Testament there can hardly be any doubt. It is referred
to explicitly and with emphasis in seventeen of the twenty-seven
books. These seventeen include all four Gospels, the Acts of the
Apostles, Romans and 1 and 2 Corinthians,' while the ten which
do not explicitly mention it include the seven shortest and slightest
books.” And those New Testament books, which contain no explicit
reference to the Resurrection, may anyway be said to imply it. It
may truly be said that they ‘breathe the Resurrection’. Without
the existence of belief in Jesus as risen from the dead, their
existence is hardly explicable.
Many passages indicate very clearly the centrality of the
Resurrection. One of the most striking is Romans 10.9 (‘Because
if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt
believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou
shalt be saved’); for it makes it abundantly clear that, for Paul,
belief that God has raised Jesus from the dead is the decisive and

* First published in The Expository Times 101 (1989-90), pp. 167—72.

' The rest of the seventeen are Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians,
1 Thessalonians, 2 Timothy, Hebrews, | Peter and Revelation. (On the fact that
the only direct reference to the Resurrection of Christ in Hebrews is in 13.20 see
C. E. B. Cranfield, The Bible and Christian Life, Edinburgh, 1985, p. 146.)
2 Namely, 2 Thessalonians, Titus, Philemon, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John and Jude.
__ 3 The Epistle of James might seem to be an exception; but on it see Cranfield,
op. cit., pp. 151 ff.

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characteristic belief of Christians. Similarly clear is his statement

in 1 Corinthians 15.14 that ‘if Christ hath not been raised, then is
our preaching vain, your faith also is vain’. We may set beside these
Pauline examples the words of 1 Peter 1.3 (‘Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy
begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead’) and the characterization by the author of Acts of
the apostles’ preaching as ‘their witness of the resurrection of the
Lord Jesus’.* If then the Resurrection is so central to the faith of
the New Testament, it clearly matters tremendously whether the
affirmation that Jesus was raised from the dead is true or not. If our
study of the New Testament is serious, we are bound sooner or
later to ask, ‘Was Jesus of Nazareth really raised from the dead?’
Can we, or can we not, respond to the Easter greeting, ‘Christ is
risen’, with our own ‘He is risen indeed’, with intellectual and
moral integrity?
I shall attempt here, first, to consider the main objections urged
against the truth of the affirmation that Jesus was raised from the
dead; secondly, to set out the main arguments which may be
brought in support of it; and, thirdly, to indicate the conclusion to
which I personally come.

I
1. The New Testament contains no narrative of the actual
raising of Jesus (according to the NewTestament that was an event
which no mortal eye saw), but it does contain several accounts of
incidents associated with it, namely, the discovery of the empty
tomb and the resurrection appearances. The first of the objections
which have to be considered is that there are a number of apparent
discrepancies between these accounts.
(i) Luke 23.56 seems to indicate that it was before the sabbath
began that the women prepared their spices and ointments,
whereas according to Mark 16.1 they waited till the sabbath
was over before buying their spices.
T Acts 4.33; cf. 1.22: 232 3.855.532" 04 ies ah

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(11) As to the time when the women came to the tomb on the
first day of the week, Mark surprisingly qualifies his ‘very
early’ by ‘when the sun was risen’, which seems to contra-
dict it (the Western variant which gives the sense ‘as the
sun was rising’ looks like an attempt to remove the
difficulty). The ‘at early dawn’ of Luke 24.1 and ‘while it
was yet dark’ of John 20.1 agree with Mark’s ‘very early’,
but not with his ‘when the sun was risen’. Matthew’s ‘late
on the sabbath day, as it began to dawn toward the first
day of the week’ (28.1) would seem to indicate Saturday
evening after sundown, when (according to Jewish reckon-
ing) the first day of the week was beginning.
(111) According to Mark 16.1 (compare Luke 24.1) the women’s
purpose was to anoint the body; but Matthew 28.1 gives as
their intention simply ‘to see the sepulchre’.
(iv) As to the number and names of the women who came to
the tomb there is a puzzling variation. According to Mark
there were three, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of
James, and Salome; according to Matthew 28.1 there were
two, Mary Magdalene and ‘the other Mary’. Luke 24.10
names three women, two of whom are the same as in Mark,
while Joanna replaces Salome (there is also a reference to
‘the other women with them’). According to John 20.1, 11
and 18, Mary Magdalene was apparently alone.°
(v) According to Mark 16.5 and Matthew 28.5, one angel
appears to the women: in Luke 24.4 (compare v. 23) and
John 20.12 two angels are seen.
(vi) The effect of the angel’s (or angels’) words on the women is
variously represented. Mark 16.8 tells us that the women
‘went out, and fled from the tomb; for trembling and
astonishment had come upon them: and they said nothing to
any one; for they were afraid’. Matthew also mentions their
fear, but couples with it ‘great joy’, and adds that they ‘ran
to bring his disciples word’ (28.8). Luke says that they

5 Though the first person plural in John 20.2 (‘we know not’) is possibly a
trace of the involvement of more than one woman.

By:
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returned from the tomb, and told all these things to the
eleven, and to all the rest’ (24.9). In John the angels do not
give the command, but Jesus himself gives itand Mary obeys.
(vii) In contrast with all four Gospels, Paul says nothing of any
visit of women (or of a woman) to the tomb.
(viii) While all four Gospels testify to the tomb’s being empty,
Paul does not mention the tomb at all.
(ix ) 1 Corinthians 15.5 seems to imply that the first person to
see the risen Lord was Peter. Luke 24.34 agrees with this.
But Matthew 28.9 (compare 28.1), John 20.14—17 and the
Markan appendix (Mark 16.9) agree that Jesus appeared
first either to Mary Magdalene alone or to her and ‘the
other Mary’. Mark 16.1—8 says nothing about an appear-
ance of Jesus himself to the women.
(x —
Mark 14.28 and 16.7 point to a resurrection appearance in
Galilee, though Mark’s own text stops at 16.8 without any
appearance’s having been related. Matthew does record
such an appearance (28.16ff), preceded by one to the
women in Jerusalem (28.9f). John 20 relates appearances in
Jerusalem, John 21 appearances in Galilee. Luke stands
apart somewhat awkwardly, in that he not only records
appearances only in Jerusalem and its neighbourhood,
but also by his omission of any parallel to Mark 14.28,
his pointed alteration of Mark 16.7 (Luke 24.6f) and his
inclusion of the command to tarry in Jerusalem in 24.49
(compare Acts 1.4) seems to be deliberately ruling out the
possibility of a Galilean appearance.

Some further discrepancies can be discerned; but these which

have been listed would seem to be the most significant. Of these
the first six are not, I think, particularly serious. Differences
between the accounts of eye-witnesses of quite ordinary events are
a common enough phenomenon. And, if the Resurrection really
did happen, the incidents associated with it were certainly not just
ordinary events. That there should be signs of disturbance and
strain in the human testimony would not be surprising. With
regard to (vii), we need not infer that Paul did not know of the part

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played by the women. His omission of them in 1 Corinthians 15.4ff

is adequately explained on the assumption that he specially wanted
to cite witnesses who would be as generally acceptable as possible.
In Jewish legal practice women were not accepted as credible
witnesses except in certain limited areas of life, and in Gentile
society too their position in regard to the law was inferior to that of
men.° With regard to (viii), Paul’s omission of any reference to the
tomb goes naturally with his not mentioning the women as
witnesses. To conclude from it that Paul and the earliest tradition
must have known nothing of the empty tomb is quite unjustifiable.
The emptiness of the tomb is almost certainly implied by the
mention of burial between ‘died’ and ‘hath been raised’ in 1
Corinthians 15.4. With regard to (ix), the disagreement as to who
was the first to see the risen Lord, the part played by concern that
the testimony should be generally acceptable is to be recognized.
With regard to (x), it is to be noted that Luke, who appears to be
intent on excluding the tradition of appearances in Galilee, is also
the one who, by specifying forty days as the period between the
resurrection and the ascension, underlines the fact that there was
ample time to allow for appearances both in Jerusalem and its
neighbourhood and also in Galilee.
2. The presence of an angel or angels in the Gospel Easter
narratives is probably for a good many people an additional reason
for doubting the truth of the Resurrection. On this it may simply
be said that, while angels as generally depicted in Christian art are
indeed incredible, the possibility that the angels of the Bible may
be a quite different matter should not be ignored. It would be wise
at least to consider Karl Barth’s discussion of the angels in Church
Dogmatics 11/3, pp. 369-519,’ before we decide either to dismiss
the Easter angel as a legendary accretion or to appeal to his presence
in the story as a reason for rejecting the truth of the Resurrection
itself.

6 That Paul’s not mentioning the women here was due to a personal antipathy
to women is disproved by, among other things, the notable prominence of female
names in Romans 16.
7 For a brief account of this, reference may be made to W. A. Whitehouse, The
“Authority of Grace, Edinburgh, 1981, pp. 47-52.

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3. But the most important objection of all is, without doubt,

simply the apparent sheer, stark, utter impossibility of the thing.
For Jews of New Testament times, who believed in the final,
eschatological resurrection, the idea that that final resurrection had,
in the case of one man, been accomplished already was unthinkable.
For the vast multitudes of modern men and women, to whom it
seems perfectly obvious that death is the end, the manifest,
incontrovertible, irreversible termination of a human life, the claim
that Jesus was raised from the dead is nonsense, its folly apparent
as soon as it is uttered. And this conviction that death is the end
does seem to give modern man a certain sense of security. At least,
when things are going well for him, he can enjoy his brittle
triumphs, strut a while in pride and forget about his limits. But the
message of the Resurrection threatens even this illusory sense of
security. It opens up a vast vista of the unknown, mocking man’s
self-importance. To entertain the thought of it is to suffer all one’s
ordinary preconceptions to be called in question. No wonder it is
so earnestly resisted. Whether this third and strongest objection is
outweighed by what will be set out below remains to be seen.

i
The main things which may be said in support of the truth of the
Resurrection must now be indicated.
1. The transformation of the disciples may be mentioned first.
There is no reason to question the historicity of their frightened
and dejected condition at the time of the death of Jesus, as
portrayed in the Gospels (e.g. Mark 14.50, 66-72; John 20.19). It
is not something which the early church would have been inclined
to invent. Besides, it is something we could safely have taken for
granted, even without the testimony of the Gospels, as the natural,
the inevitable, consequence of what they had experienced. But it is
evident that within a few weeks of the Crucifixion these same
disciples had become bold and energetic witnesses of a risen Christ.
Leaving aside the testimony of the early chapters of Acts, we have
firm enough evidence of this transformation in what Paul says of
his own persecution of the church (1 Cor. 15.9; Gal. 1.13). Already

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within — at the very most — five or six years of the Crucifixion so

many had been won by the disciples’ witness, that the young
Pharisee was moved to mount a strenuous and energetic campaign
against the followers of Jesus. This astounding transformation of
the disciples presupposes a sufficient cause, something which was
enough to convince them that Jesus was alive.
2. The second piece of evidence is the conversion and sub-
sequent life and work of the apostle Paul. His most extended
testimony to the fact of the Resurrection is in 1 Corinthians 15.
Here, writing in AD 53 or 54 (more than a decade before the earliest
of the Gospels), he reminds the Corinthian Christians of the
tradition which he had passed on to them when he was in Corinth
(probably in ap 50—51). As he indicates that the tradition he passed
on he had himself received, the implication would seem to be that
what is said in the latter part of v. 3 and in vv. 4-7 is the church’s
basic tradition which he had received in the earliest days of his
Christian life. In v. 8 he adds his personal testimony: ‘And last of
all, as unto one born out of due time,® he appeared also to me.’ In
connection with Paul’s conversion a number of points must be
made.

* The sense of ‘as unto one born out of due time’ is uncertain. Is Paul alluding ©
to the difference between his seeing the risen Lord after the Ascension and the
pre-Ascension Resurrection appearances? But the natural significance of ektroma
has to do not with unduly late, but with unduly early, birth, denoting that which
is not yet properly formed and ready to be born. C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on
the First Epistle to the Corinthians, London, 1968, p. 344, suggests that it could be
said that ‘in comparison with other apostles who had accompanied Jesus during
his ministry he had been born without the due period of gestation’. Could it
perhaps be that Paul’s thought is rather of the fact that he was still a furious
persecutor of the disciples when he was apprehended by Christ — so in a real
sense extremely unprepared, something not properly formed, an ugly thing? The
way Paul continues in v. 9 (note the ‘For’) might seem to support this suggestion:
‘For I am the least of the apostles, that am not worthy to be called an apostle.
because I persecuted the church of God.’ This seems preferable both to the
suggestion that Paul is taking up a reproach levelled against him by his opponents
and also to the suggestion that Paul means ‘that he has seen by anticipation the
glory of Christ as that will be manifest in the Parousia’ (S. Neill and T. Wright,
The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1986, Oxford, 1988, p. 308, n. 1).

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(i) It cannot be maintained at all plausibly that this zealous

persecutor of the disciples was in any way predisposed to
accept the truth of the Resurrection. Having committed
himself so publicly to the attempt to root out the new
movement as something mischievous, he had a personal
interest in not believing. For him to accept that Jesus had
been raised from the dead was a volte-face involving a high
degree of personal humiliation.
(ii) As one who had been working in conjunction with the
Jewish authorities, he is likely to have been well acquainted
with their views on the ministry of Jesus and subsequent
events. He must surely have known what answer or answers
they were giving to the claim that he was risen.
(iii) His unquestionable intellectual power (about which no one
who has been at all seriously engaged in the study of the
Epistle to the Romans is likely to have any doubts) must be
taken into account.
(iv) He was clearly a deeply religious man, fully aware how
serious a thing it would be to bear false witness about God
by proclaiming that God raised Jesus from the dead, if in
fact he did not raise him (compare 1 Cor. 15.15). The
testimony of this man, with his background, his qualities,
his character, with his mind which has left us so much
authentic evidence of its workings (in — at the very least — 1
and 2 Corinthians, Galatians and Romans), I personally
find extraordinarily convincing.

3. A third thing to mention is the striking prominence of

women in the Gospel Easter narratives. Reference has already been
made, in connection with Paul’s omitting female witnesses in 1
Corinthians 15.4ff, to the fact that women were not acceptable
witnesses in Jewish legal practice. It made sense to cite only those
whose testimony stood a real chance of being taken seriously. The
fact that these traditions, in which women featured so prominently,
were nevertheless preserved would seem to indicate the presence
of a high regard for historical truthfulness. That such traditions
could be inventions of the community seems inconceivable, since

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they flouted accepted ideas about credible witness, were liable to

attract ridicule’ and, furthermore, ran counter to the natural
tendency to magnify the apostles (since they represent the women
as receiving the news of the Resurrection before them). This third
thing, then, which is inexplicable except as genuine historical
reminiscence, would seem to be a further pointer to the truth of
the Resurrection.
4. The undisputed fact that, in spite of all that the sabbath
meant to Jews and although Jesus himself had loyally observed it
all his life (even if not always in such a way as to satisfy his critics),
Jewish as well as Gentile Christians soon came to regard the first
day of the week as the special day for Christian worship” is highly
significant. The replacement of sabbath by Lord’s day presupposes
a sufficient cause — nothing less than, at the very least, an extra-
ordinarily strong conviction of an event’s having taken place on
the first day of the week which could be seen as transcending in
importance even God’s ‘rest’ after completing his work of creation.
5. Another thing to be said in support of the truth of the
Resurrection is that, before the event, neither the women nor the
disciples had the slightest expectation of their Master’s being
raised from the dead before the general eschatological resurrection.
The early church, convinced that Jesus had been raised, certainly
searched the Old Testament for passages which could be taken to ©
foretell the Resurrection: but there is no reason to believe that the
Old Testament had suggested to the disciples, before the first
Easter Day, any hope of this sort. That the various predictions of
the Passion (in particular, Mark 8.31; 9.31; 10.32—34), if in their
present form made by Jesus himself (something which is, of course,

° We catch a glimpse in the New Testament itself of the sort of ridicule which
could have been expected, in the reference to ‘old wives’ fables’ in 1 Timothy 4.7
and in what is said about the fecklessness of ‘silly women’ and the ease with
which they can be led astray in 2 Timothy 3.6f. For material illustrative of ancient
Jewish, Greek and Roman attitudes to women reference may be made to the
article on yuvy in G. Kittel and G. Friedrich (ed.), TWNT, Stuttgart, 1933-79,
Vol. 1 (Eng. tr. by G. W. Bromiley, TDNT, 1964ff).
1 Cf. Acts 20.7; 1 Corinthians 16.2; Revelation 1.10 (perhaps); Didache
14.1.

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strongly denied by many), were not understood by the disciples at

the time, seems clear enough.
6. There is also the highly significant fact that neither the
Jewish nor the Roman authorities ever produced evidence to
disprove the claim that Jesus had been raised. The Jewish
authorities, in particular, had every reason to want to do so, and
they must surely have been in a position to interrogate and
search thoroughly. Rumours of what the disciples were saying can
scarcely have failed to get to the ears of authority within a few
days of the Crucifixion, even if the audacious public proclamation
of the Resurrection did not start till Pentecost. The chances of
finding the body, if the claim that Jesus was risen was not true,
must surely at that early date have been quite good. The Sanhedrin
must have known that the most effective way to be rid of what
they regarded as a dangerous movement would be to produce the
body, and knowing this they must surely have instituted an
energetic search. The fact that with the will and the powers and
resources they surely had, they never produced the body must
count as a significant consideration in favour of the truth of the
Resurrection.
7. Last of all must be mentioned the continuance of the
Christian church through nineteen and a half centuries, in spite of
bitter and often prolonged persecution, in spite of all its own
terrible unworthiness and incredible follies, in spite of its divisions,
and in spite of all the changes which the passing years and centuries
have brought. The fact that the church still produces today (as it
has produced in all the past centuries of its existence) human
beings, who, trusting in Jesus Christ crucified, risen and exalted,
show in their lives, for all their frailty, a recognizable beginning of
being freed from self for God and neighbour, is a not unimpressive
pointer to the truth of the Resurrection.

Ill
It will, I think, be helpful at this point to attempt some clarification
of the two basic alternatives between which we have to choose: (a)
Jesus was raised from the dead; and (4) Jesus was not raised from

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the dead. With regard to (a), it must be said that we are concerned
with the affirmation of the New Testament and of the church’s creeds
that Jesus mas raised. We must therefore put aside two views of
the Resurrection which are sometimes proposed: first, that accord-
ing to which it is possible to believe in the Resurrection without
believing that the crucified body was raised; and, secondly, that
which insists that the risen body is simply the crucified body
resuscitated, possessed of exactly the same properties as it had
before death. Both these views must, I believe, be rejected as
inconsistent with the witness of the New Testament. In support of
the former, appeal is made to Paul’s failure to mention the
empty tomb; but the sequence ‘died . . . was buried . . . hath been
raised’ in 1 Corinthians 15.3f surely implies it, as does Paul’s use
of the language of ‘raising’ here and elsewhere. It would seem
that there never was in the early church a belief in the Resurrec-
tion which did not involve belief that the tomb was empty. A
supposed belief in the Resurrection without belief that the tomb
was empty must surely be classified as acceptance of basic
alternative (4), not as acceptance of basic alternative (a). As to the
latter view, it is contradicted by the way the New Testament
represents the risen Jesus as appearing and vanishing, becoming
less or more recognizable (e.g. Luke 24.16, 31; John 20.14—16),
and passing through closed doors (John 20.19, 26: cf. vv. 6 and 7, ©
in which it seems to be suggested that the body had been
mysteriously withdrawn from the cloths, leaving them collapsed
where they were). The New Testament attests the risen body’s
being the same body as was crucified (Luke 24.39-40; John 20.27),
but the same body wonderfully changed, transformed into a
glorious body, no longer subject to the limitations of Jesus’
historical life."’
With regard to basic alternative (4), clarification is achieved
when we recognize that to accept it means coming to one of three

" It is scarcely fair to press Luke 24.42f and Acts 10.41 as proof that the author
of Luke and Acts must have entertained a different view. Why should we assume
that he could not have thought that the risen Jesus could partake of earthly food
and drink, not because his risen body needed them, but for the sake of his
-. disciples?

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conclusions: either, the church’s belief that Jesus was raised from
the dead is based on a fraud; or, it is based on a mistake; or, it is
based on some combination of fraud and mistake. It would seem,
then, that there are, in all, four alternatives from which we have to
choose:
(i) The Christian affirmation of the Resurrection has its origin
in a fraud;
(ii) It has its origin in a mistake;
(iii) It has its origin in some sort of combination of fraud and
mistake;
(iv) It is true.
With regard to (i), Matthew 27.62—66 and 28.11—15 are
evidence that the explanation of the Resurrection as a fraud
perpetrated by the disciples, who had stolen the body of Jesus
and then announced that he had been raised from the dead, was
current among the Jews at the time of the composition of Matthew.
We may accept that, were a fraud really at the bottom of the
matter, the disciples (and the women) would be the only — even
remotely — likely perpetrators of it. No one else is at all likely to
have had an interest in the propagation of such a falsehood. The
Jewish and Roman authorities had, in fact, a very strong interest
in Jesus’s being securely dead. But the objections to this first
alternative are formidable indeed. What motive could the
disciples have had for embarking upon such a fraud? Is it really
likely that they would have succeeded not only in disposing of the
body (in the circumstances, perhaps itself not a very easy task)
but also in convincing a large number of people that they had
seen the risen Jesus (1 Cor. 15.5—8)? Do not the discrepancies
and unevennesses between the various accounts of the visits to the
tomb and of the Resurrection appearances weigh against the
credibility of such a theory (one would have expected the
perpetrators of a concerted deception to have taken more care to
make their stories agree)? Would such a fraud account for that
transformation of the disciples to which reference has already been
made? And, last and most telling of all, is it possible to reconcile
responsibility for the conception and carrying out of such a fraud

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with what we know of the character and conduct of the earliest

Christians?”
Alternative (ii) can take more than one form. There is the
explanation of the Resurrection appearances as hallucinatory
experiences. But there is no evidence to suggest that the disciples
or the women were in such a state of mind as would have made
them liable to this sort of hallucination. They were not expecting
any resurrection before the final one at the end of history (the
reflection attributed to the chief priests and Pharisees in Matthew
27.63 hardly accords with the disciples’ understanding of Jesus’
teaching during his ministry); and their Jewish background would
hardly have made them susceptible to such hallucinations.
Moreover, the experiencing of hallucinations by so many different
individuals and groups as are listed in 1 Corinthians 15.5—8 or are
represented in the Gospels as seeing the risen Jesus, and in such
varied situations, is hard to envisage. There is also the suggestion
that the women went to the wrong tomb by mistake. But it is
extremely difficult to imagine how the mistake would not have been
quickly corrected. Is it really plausible to maintain that the trans-
formation of the disciples was simply the result of a misunder-
standing or of an illusion born of hallucination? Does such an
explanation of belief in the Resurrection do justice to the fact that
the earliest church included at any rate one or two people of the
intellectual calibre of the apostle Paul?
With regard to (iii), it is possible to imagine various combi-
nations of mistake and deception: for example, a mistake about the
identity of the tomb combined with the invention of appearances,
or a stealing and secretly disposing of the body combined with
hallucinatory appearances, but none seems at all plausible. In fact,
alternative (iii) seems even less convincing than (1) or (11). Would
not such a mixture of mistake and deceit have had even less chance
of being sustained for long than either the one thing or the other?

12 The suggestion, which has been made, that Jesus was not really dead, but
mistaken for dead, and revived in the tomb, does indeed offer a motive for the
disciples’ deception (to protect Jesus); but otherwise it is exposed to all the
objections to alternative (i), and to others besides.

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It seems to me that alternative (iv), hard to accept though it

undoubtedly is, is the least incredible of the four — by a long way.
The position seems, then, to be that, while the discovery of the
dead bones of Jesus would indeed, as C. K. Barrett has rightly
maintained,!’ conclusively disprove the church’s doctrine of the
Resurrection and utterly destroy Christian faith, no amount of
scientific, historical-critical or other scholarly activity can prove
conclusively that the Resurrection is true. A positive proof of its
truth is just not to be had by such means. Certainty with regard to
it can come to us only by the work of the Holy Spirit making us
free to believe. But it seems to me that the evidence available to us
— and I have tried now a good many times to weigh it as carefully
and honestly and objectively as I can — is such that, though I cannot
prove by historical-critical methods that God raised Jesus from the
dead, I can believe it without in any way violating my intellectual
or moral integrity. For myself, I must declare that I do indeed
confidently believe it.

'S Barrett, op. cit., p. 349.

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 12

Some Reflections on the

- Subject of the Virgin Birth

The affirmation that Jesus Christ ‘was conceived by the Holy

Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary’ is beset by many problems and
difficulties, and to deny or try to ignore their existence is bad
theological scholarship. But it is also bad theological scholarship —
though this is sometimes in danger of being overlooked — to
refuse to consider seriously and with as open a mind as possible
any evidence or any rational argument, whether historical or
theological, which can be adduced as in any way supporting this
affirmation of the Apostles’ Creed. It seems to me that neither those
who accept the historicity of the Virgin Birth nor those who reject
it have a monopoly of prejudice. I cannot here attempt anything
like a full or systematic discussion of this difficult and controversial _
subject. The best I can do is to set down briefly and as clearly as I
can a few reflections as a very modest contribution to the on-going
debate.

I
It is surely right to acknowledge from the start that there is
absolutely no possibility of any one’s being able to prove the
historicity of the Virgin Birth (if it is historical) by historical-
critical methods. A positive proof is out of the question. It is also, I
think, right to acknowledge that up to the present no proof of its
non-historicity has been produced. A good many considerations
have indeed been urged, which have seemed to a good many people

*First published in Scottish Journal of Theology 41 (1988), pp. 177-89.

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to suggest that it is improbable that the Virgin Birth is historical;

but a conclusive proof that it is not historical has certainly not been
presented. So we are left trying to weigh probabilities; on the
evidence available up to date, a conclusive historical-critical
decision would seem to be unattainable.

I
An element of quite gratuitous unreality has been introduced into
much Christian celebration of Christmas by the tendency to
obliterate the distinction between Christmas and Epiphany and
bring the wise men into close association with the shepherds. This
tendency ignores the facts that, while Luke 2.8 depicts the latter
as watching their flocks ‘in the same country’, Matthew 2.1 and 2
imply that the former had a considerable distance to travel; that,
whereas Luke 2.12 and 16 refer to Jesus as a ‘babe’ (BEEMoc: and
compare the use of the verb translated ‘wrap in swaddling clothes’
in vv. 7 and 12), Matthew 2.8, 9, 11, 13, 14 use the word matdtov
(RV: ‘young child’), which is appropriate for a child up to six or
seven years old; that, whereas the word @atvy (RV: ‘manger’) in
Luke 2.7, 12, 16 suggests a stable, Matthew 2.11 says that the wise
men entered ‘into the house’; and that ‘from two years old and
under’ (G0 Stetots xai xatwtéoQw) in Matthew 2.16 is more
plausibly taken as implying that the child whom Herod was
determined to make sure of killing was no longer a babe than as an
indication of sheer pointless bloodthirstiness. Read carefully, the
Infancy Narratives of Matthew and Luke, suggesting as they do
an interval of some months between the birth of Jesus and what is
related in Matthew 2.1—12, are at least more intelligible than the
fictional jumble of much popular Christian imagination. No harm
is done by disencumbering the Gospel narratives of extraneous
confusion.

iil
The main arguments urged against the historicity of the Virgin
Birth may now be briefly considered.

15Z
 SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE VIRGIN BIRTH

1. The paucity of the New Testament attestation of the Virgin

Birth is naturally adduced as a strong reason for doubting its
historicity. It is indeed directly attested only in Matthew and Luke.
But statements to the effect that its New Testament attestation is
limited to Matthew and Luke! must be firmly challenged. That
Paul used yiveo@at rather than yevvGo0at in Romans 1.3;
Galatians 4.4 and Philippians 2.7 because he knew of the Virgin
Birth is, of course, not certain, but it seems to me highly likely.’
Mark 6.3 is particularly interesting evidence. There is little doubt
that 0 TEXTMV, 6 VLOG TH¢ Magiac should be read.3 None of the
variants (with tot téxtovoc) is likely to be original, for why
any of them should have been altered to 6 Téxtwv, O VLOG THIS
Magtac has never been at all plausibly explained. The altera-
tion could hardly have been made in support of the doctrine of
the Virgin Birth, seeing that in the parallels in the two Gospels
which explicitly affirm the Virgin Birth Jesus is referred to as
‘the carpenter’s son’ (Matt. 13.55) and ‘Joseph’s son’ (Luke 4.22).
If we assume, as we surely must do, that 6 téxtwv, 0 VLOG TIS
Maetac is original in Mark, we have to ask why both the First
and Third Evangelists altered it as they did. That they did so
because they thought that some Gentile readers might be
offended by the idea of Jesus’ being a carpenter is scarcely likely.
It is much more probable that it was because they recognized —
the insult conveyed by the metronymic designation. That desig-
nation must go back beyond Mark — it cannot plausibly be
attributed to his redactional activity — and so is evidence that the
charge of illegitimacy, which was certainly levelled against Jesus
at a later date, was made very early and quite probably during his

'So very recently U. Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthdus 1, Zurich,

Einsiedeln, Cologne, Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1985, p. 102 (‘. . .derim NT nur durch
Matthaus und Lukas bezeugten Jungfrauengeburt ...’). Some systematic
theologians have accepted this view of the matter without due questioning (e.g.
J. M. Lochman, The Faith We Confess, Philadelphia, 1984; Edinburgh, 1986, p.
110).
z eo the discussion in J. McHugh, The Mother of Jesus in the New Testament,
London, 1975, pp. 274-7.
3 It is read by Nestle-Aland”*.

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lifetime.* It seems likely that John 8.41 reflects both the Fourth
Evangelist’s knowledge that this charge was current in his time
and also his own belief in the virgin birth of Jesus.” Two other
passages in St John’s Gospel very probably allude to the Virgin
Birth: 1.13 and 6.41f. With regard to the former, I agree with C. K.
Barrett’s conclusion that, while the reading which makes an explicit
reference to the birth of Jesus should be rejected, ‘it remains
probable that John was alluding to Jesus’ birth, and declaring that
the birth of Christians, being bloodless and rooted in God’s will
alone, followed the pattern of the birth of Christ himself’.® With
regard to the latter passage too Barrett’s judgment seems to me
right: it is probable that the evangelist ‘knew and accepted the
doctrine’ of the Virgin Birth and ‘that he here ironically alludes to
it — if the objectors had known the truth about Jesus’ parentage
they would have been compelled to recognize that it was entirely
congruent with his having come down from heaven’.’ The paucity
of the New Testament evidence for the Virgin Birth is not to be
denied, and we shall have something more to say about it in section
IV; but what has been said above is enough, I think, to call in
question the sweeping assertions which are often made about the
silence of the whole New Testament apart from Matthew and
Luke.
2. It is sometimes asserted that the very genealogies of
Matthew 1 and Luke 3 are themselves witnesses against the
historicity of the Virgin Birth, since they would be pointless (so it
is said), if Joseph were not the biological father of Jesus, seeing
that in them it is through Joseph that his ancestry is traced (Matt.
1.16; Luke 3.23: compare Matt. 1.20; Luke 1.27; 2.4). But the

* On Mark 6.3 see further C. E. B. Cranfield, The Gospel according to St Mark,

Cambridge, °1985, pp. 193-6; E. Stauffer, ‘Jeschu ben Mirjam: kontrovers-
geschichtliche Anmerkungen zu Mk 6:3’, in E. E. Ellis and M. Wilcox (ed.),
Neotestamentica et Semitica: studies in honour of Matthew Black, Edinburgh, 1969,
pp. 119-28.
* Cf. C. K. Barrett, The Gospel according to St John, London, 2nd edition,
1978, p. 348.
° Op. cit., p. 164.
7 Op. cit., p. 295.

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 SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE VIRGIN BIRTH

answer to this is surely that Joseph was indeed legally Jesus’ father,
having made him legally his son by naming him (Matt. 1.25:
compare v. 21), and it is in the light of this that Matthew 13.55;
Luke 2.33, 41, 43, 48; 4.22 are to be understood. There was clearly
a very strong interest in the early church in establishing the Davidic
descent of Jesus, in view of the widespread expectation that the
Messiah would belong to the family of David, and the significance
of the fact that it was in the context of the existence of this strong
interest that belief in the virginal conception of Jesus was accepted
should not be overlooked.®
3. It is argued that the apparent absence of any special under-
standing of Jesus during his ministry on the part of Mary and her
family is inconsonant with the historicity of the Virgin Birth. But,
if the birth of Jesus really took place as Matthew and Luke indicate,
is it not probable that Mary and Joseph would have been as reticent
as possible concerning it in the knowledge that the truth, if
revealed, would be likely to attract incredulity and reproach?
Moreover, the assumption that, if the doctrine of the Virgin Birth
is true, the mother of Jesus herself must for the rest of her life have
been immune from all doubt and all misunderstanding of her Son
seems to me both psychologically and theologically unsound.
4. Isaiah 7.14 (‘Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a
sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call ©
his name Immanuel’) has been claimed to be the origin of the
belief in the Virgin Birth. But, in view of the absence of pre-
Christian evidence of a messianic interpretation of this passage
(it was taken to refer to Hezekiah, the son and successor of
Ahaz) and the fact that there is no evidence of its having been
understood in pre-Christian Judaism as foretelling a virgin birth,
this suggestion is quite improbable. There was nothing in the
Hebrew text of the Isaiah verse to suggest a virgin birth, since the
word ‘almah simply denotes a young woman; and even the
Septuagint version would hardly suggest a virginal conception to

8 See further C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the

Epistle to the Romans 1, Edinburgh, °1987, pp. 58-9; J. McHugh, op. cit.,
_ especially pp. 276—7, 283, 320-1.

DS5
On ROMANS

any one who had not already got this idea in mind from elsewhere.
(More probably the hearer or reader would either understand
ta.Q0EvoOc in the sense of ‘a/mah or else take the sentence to mean
that one who is at present a virgin will subsequently conceive, not
that a virgin will conceive while still a virgin.) But for those who
already believed in Jesus’ virginal conception, the Septuagint
version of Isaiah 7.14 was a most welcome confirmation of their
faith.
5. Appeal is made to the existence of a great many alleged
parallels: stories of the births of Greek mythological heroes such as
Heracles and Perseus and of various historical figures such as Plato,
Alexander the Great, Scipio Africanus, Augustus, Apollonius of
Tyana; the belief in Egypt that each new king was the offspring of
the god Ammon who, assuming the form of the reigning king, had
intercourse with the queen; and various other myths and rituals
and legends of the ancient Near East and also much farther afield.
It is claimed that, in the light of this wealth of parallel material
from the history of religions , acceptance of the historicity of the
Virgin Birth is impossible. But none of these alleged parallels is a
real parallel. In none of them is there any question of a truly virginal
conception: rather is it a matter of physical intercourse between a
god and a mortal woman from which a birth results. In fact, the
more closely these parallels are examined, the more stark becomes
the contrast between them and the narratives of Matthew and
Luke. What is attested in the Gospels is a divine act of creation.
The fact that early Christian apologetic sometimes appealed to the
pagan myths in support of the truth of the Virgin Birth should not
be taken to imply that the apologists were unaware of the greatness
of the contrast: their appeal was only an argumentum ad hominem
(those who could accept such stories should not balk at the Virgin
Birth).’
6. It is argued that much of the rest of the Infancy Narratives
is unhistorical and that this suggests doubts about the historicity of
the Virginal Conception. I am not going to try to deal with every
detail which has been questioned, but shall mention just some

* See furtherJ.McHugh, op. cit., pp. 290-1.

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 SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE VIRGIN BIRTH

matters. I hope this will be enough to set a question mark against

the academic respectability of the cavalier dismissal of the bulk of
Matthew | and 2 and Luke | and 2 as merely ‘unhistorical’.
A cluster of objections concerns the census. Against the state-
ment of Luke 2.1 that ‘there went out a decree from Caesar
Augustus that all the world should be enrolled’ it is objected that
there was no census of the whole empire under Augustus. But the
fact that under Augustus no census was carried through which
embraced every part of the Roman empire at the same time and
was completed within a short period does not mean that Luke’s
statement is without good historical basis. A far-reaching reform
of the administration of the empire was certainly carried out
under Augustus and it certainly did involve censuses or taxation-
assessments of a very thorough and comprehensive kind. Plenty of
evidence for them has survived.!° The work of assessment took
varying amounts of time according to the circumstances obtaining
in particular areas: it could take several decades. It has been
objected that, since at the time of Jesus’ birth Judaea was a client
state and not part of the empire, a tax-assessment by Augustus’
authority could not have taken place there. But a Roman tax-
assessment was carried out in the autonomous city-state of Apamea
by Quirinius and the fact that towards the end of his life Herod
was not in high favour with Rome makes it far from improbable ©
that a Roman tax-assessment was instituted in Judaea.'’ A further
objection to Luke’s narrative is that Quirinius was governor of
Syria from aD 6 to AD 9. There was a census then and it was
accompanied by disturbances (compare Acts 5.37). Is the reference
to Quirinius, then, in Luke 2.2 an error? Various solutions to the
problem have been suggested. The most probable of them would
seem to be that favoured by Stauffer, namely, that Quirinius was a
commander-in-chief of the east (like Pompey the Great, Marcus
Antonius and M. Vipsanius Agrippa) from about 12 Bc, sometimes

0 Cf, E. Stauffer, Jesus and His Story, London, 1960, pp. 28-31, 167; N. G. L.
Hammond and H. H. Scullard (ed.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd ed.,
1970, p. 220 (s.v. ‘Census’).
! Cf. Stauffer, op. cit., pp. 31-3, 167-8.

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Dogmatik I1I/3, pp. 426—608).'* Having read and pondered it, I

am not disposed to regard the presence of angels in Matthew | and
2 and Luke 1 and 2 asa reason for questioning the historicity of the
Virgin Birth.
7. There is yet another argument, one which is not often stated
in so many words as an argument against acceptance of the Virgin
Birth as historical but which does, I suspect, work powerfully at
the back of many people’s minds. It is the tacit assumption that
miracles do not and cannot happen, and that, since the Virgin Birth
would be a miracle, it cannot have occurred. John McHugh is
surely right in maintaining that, while an atheist can with logical
consistency assert that a virginal conception in impossible, it is not
possible for any one who believes in a Creator God or is an agnostic
to assert this with logical consistency.'!? A good many Christians, I
suspect, have, without being aware of what they were doing, taken
over some of the assumptions of an atheistic world-view and
allowed them to exercise a veto over their thinking.

IV
There are two considerations, each of which by itself strongly
suggests, but which, together, seem to me to make it virtually
certain, that Joseph was not biologically the father of Jesus. The
first is the fact that on this the otherwise diverse testimonies of two
mutually hostile witnesses, the Christian and the Jewish traditions,
are agreed, the former asserting that Jesus was born of a virgin, the
latter that he was the offspring of Mary and some man other than
Joseph.” The agreement between mutually opposed witnesses has,
other things being equal, to be accorded special respect. By itself,

18 A stimulating brief account of these pages of Barth is W. A. Whitehouse,

‘God’s heavenly kingdom and His servants the angels’, in S77 4 (1951), pp.
376-82, reprinted in his The Authority of Grace: essays in response to Karl Barth,
Edinburgh, 1981, pp. 47-52.
Ops eitpe 322.
” Cf. Stauffer, op cit., pp. 23-5, 165f; also the essay by him cited above. See
also H. Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum, Cambridge, +1980, p. 31, n. 3.

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 SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE VIRGIN BirTH

however, this consideration does not prove the point, since it does
not exclude the possibility that the Christian claim was the creation
of some doctrinal, apologétic or other interest (and that the Jewish
reproach was a response to the Christian claim) or the possibility
that the Jewish reproach was a slander without any foundation
whatsoever and the Christian claim a reaction to it. When, how-
ever, the second consideration is joined to the first, those possi-
bilities are ruled out. This second consideration is the recognition
of the significance of four facts in combination, namely:
(1) that the earliest church was firmly convinced that Jesus was
the Messiah;
(ii) that there was no pre-Christian expectation that the
Messiah would be virgin-born;
(111) that there was a very strong — even if not quite universal —
expectation that the Messiah would be a descendant of
David;
(iv) that the Davidic descent of Joseph was affirmed.
(These four facts in combination surely do make it virtually
impossible to suppose that Christians could have simply invented
the Virgin Birth, whether on their own initiative or as a reply toa
Jewish slander, knowing all the time that Jesus was Joseph’s son by
Mary.) Taken together, these two considerations seem to me to
compel us to regard the view that Jesus was the offspring of the
union of Joseph and Mary as a non-starter and to accept it as
virtually certain that we have only two alternatives from which to
choose: either Jesus was the son of Mary and of some man other
than Joseph, or the affirmation of the Virgin Birth is true.
While it is clear that there is no question of our being able to
arrive at a choice between these two alternatives which is absolutely
certain from a historical-critical point of view, there are, I think,
some things which can be said with considerable confidence. It
can, for one thing, be said that it is vastly more difficult to explain
how the early church came to believe in the Virgin Birth, if it is
unhistorical, than many recent New Testament scholars have
assumed. The inadequacy of the alleged parallels as an explanation
becomes more and more apparent, the more closely one examines

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governing on his own, sometimes together. with an imperial

procurator. On this view, Luke 2.1ff will refer to the first stage of
the taxation-assessment, and Acts 5.37 to its final stages.’* Two
other objections, that Joseph would not have been required to go
to Bethlehem from Nazareth (Luke 2.3—4) and that Mary would
not have had to go also (Luke 2.5), are probably mistaken; for, if
Joseph had any rights in any property in his ancestral home-town,
he would have had to appear there for registration, and, while in a
census of Roman citizens only the father of the family was required
to appear, it seems clear that in a first assessment in a province or
(as here) in a client state women also had to appear."
The account of the visit of the Magi is regarded by many as a
product of haggadic imagination; but Stauffer’s claim that it ‘stands
on solid ground’" is not easily dismissed. The Berlin Table (of
planets) and the Star Almanac of Sippar (on the Euphrates) have
shown how accurately astronomers at the end of the first century
Bc could calculate in advance the orbits and conjunctions of planets.
In the year 7 Bc the planet Jupiter was involved in a particularly
interesting and striking series of events. In the spring it crossed the
path of the planet Venus, and in the summer and autumn it met
the planet Saturn several times in the rare conjunctio magna. It
seems perverse to refuse to consider seriously the possibility that
the narrative of Matthew 2.1ff rests on a basis of fact and that
certain Magi did observe in the place where they lived the
beginning’ of this orbit of Jupiter; that, as a result of their
observation and of the astrological significance they attributed to
the phenomena which they were able to predict, they set out on an
expedition to Palestine; and that, when they were there, they
witnessed the climax of these celestial phenomena. It seems to me

" Stauffer, op. cit., pp. 33-4, 35-6, 168. See also McHugh, op. cit., pp. 141f
(he notes that Josephus refers to what is mentioned in Acts 5.37 as an
GMOTIUNOLC, not an Groyeagy).
'S Cf. Stauffer, op. cit., pp. 34-5, 168.
3 Op. CEM PASTE
'S ev TH &vorohi in i Matthew 2.2 and 9 isi better taken to mean ‘at its rising’
than ‘in the east’.

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 SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE VIRGIN BIRTH

reasonable to suppose that the basis of what is said about the star in
these verses of Matthew is not an imaginary tale of a highly bizarre
miracle but a sequence of natural and predictable phenomena, to
which at the time, in accordance with contemporary astrological
ideas, special political and dynastic significance was attributed.'
The historicity of the massacre of the children has also been
doubted. Could the story have originated in the desire to bring out
the parallel between Jesus and Moses (see Exod. 1.8—2.10)? Is
Hercd likely to have perpetrated such a crime? Woutd Augustus
have allowed it to pass unpunished? Once again Stauffer makes a
case for historicity.'’ His appeal to the evidence of the Assumption
of Moses 6.24 and, in particular, to the words ‘and the young’ in
v. 4 (He shall slay the old and the young, and he shall not spare’) is
telling. The passage clearly refers to Herod, and it is to be dated in
the period ap 6-30. May it perhaps be very early, independent
evidence of the massacre of the innocents? At least, it would be
wise not to be too confident in setting down the whole of Matthew
2.13—23 as unhistorical.
One other matter may be mentioned here, namely, the fact that
angels are said to play a part. For many that 1s a sure sign of non-
historicity. That angels as generally depicted in Christian art even
in its highest reaches are quite incredible is surely to be
acknowledged. But, before we also dismiss out of hand the angels
as they figure in the biblical testimony, we should, I think, be well
advised to pay serious attention to what Barth had to say on the
subject in the Church Dogmatics III/3, pp. 369 — 519 (= Kirchliche

‘6 See further Stauffer, op. cit., pp. 36-8, 169. With regard to Matthew 2.9, it
should surely be said that to insist that the evangelist meant that the star actually
travelled in front of the Magi from Jerusalem to Bethlehem at a camel’s pace
(having already preceded them in this way from their home to Jerusalem) and
then came to a sudden stop immediately above the stable is more than a little
pedantic and prosaic. (That the Magi themselves, if they were of the calibre of
the men who worked in Sippar, are not likely to have entertained any such idea,
should go without saying!) Is it not rather like insisting that every one who uses
the expressions ‘sunrise’ and ‘sunset’ must believe that the sun goes round the
earth?
-. 7 Op. cit., pp. 38-42.

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them. The question has to be asked, whether the confident appeal

to, and accumulation of, parallels has not been marked by a degree
of superficiality and lack of discrimination. This question was
raised for me acutely, when I read recently in the first volume of
Luz’s commentary on Matthew (which seems to me to be in many
ways an outstandingly fresh, stimulating and well written con-
tribution to Matthean studies) the astonishing assertion that the
evidence for the miraculous birth of Plato is superior to the
evidence for the virgin birth of Jesus.*’ The multiplication of
pseudo-parallels does not help; for, if these ‘parallels’ are not real
parallels, a hundred of them or a thousand count for no more than
one, since — something which, in this connection, New Testament
scholars have tended to forget — the value of nought multiplied by
a hundred or by a thousand, like that of nought multiplied by one,
is precisely nought. Up to the present no tolerably credible
explanation of how belief in the Virgin Birth arose, if the Virgin
Birth is not historical, has been forthcoming.
But those alleged parallels may indeed have an important
bearing on the most significant of the arguments advanced against
the historicity of the Virgin Birth, namely, the paucity of its New
Testament attestation. For, while they are not close enough
substantially for it to be at all plausible to suppose them to have
been the source of the Christian belief in the Virgin Birth, they are
superficially close enough to have been a powerful reason for the
church’s reticence about it. The church may well have sensed the
danger that the Virgin Birth, if proclaimed in the Gentile world,
would be misunderstood along the lines of the pagan myths, as
being like the birth of a Perseus or a Heracles, or as a mere flattering
fancy like the stories of the births of Plato, Alexander, Augustus.
Such a fear may well have been an important reason for the
church’s reticence and so for the paucity of New Testament

*! Luz, op cit., p. 102, n. 25. But how can one believe that Diogenes Laertius
3.2 warrants the assertion, ‘Die Quellenlage ist hier [i.e. with regard to the
supernatural birth of Plato] besser als bei Jesus’? Other references (not specified
by Luz) for the story of Plato’s birth are given by Chadwick, op. cit., p. 321, n.
12. Origen’s own reference in Contra Celsum 1.37 should also be mentioned.

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 SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE VIRGIN BIRTH

attestation. But, when once the doctrine had come to be widely

known outside the church, apologists would, not unnaturally, use
the ad hominem argument that those who could believe the pagan
stories had no reason to balk at the Virgin Birth.”
In the earliest period, the lifetime of Jesus himself, it is surely
understandable that, if the Virgin Birth is historical, Mary and
Joseph should have been reticent about it, trying very hard to keep
the strange circumstances of Jesus’ birth unknown to family and
neighbours. They may have done this partly out of reverence for
God’s action. But they certainly had a very obvious and over-
whelming reason for trying to keep their secret to themselves in
the knowledge that its disclosure would be bound to be met by
incredulity and reproaches. The conclusion that Mary had done
wrong would naturally be drawn.
That the secret would somehow get out and rumours begin to
circulate is also understandable. That they were already circulating
during the lifetime of Jesus seems highly probable.
It is, surely, extremely difficult, on the assumption that the
Virgin Birth is not historical, to explain at all convincingly how the
early church came during the first century to affirm it, in spite of
the fact that there was no expectation that the Messiah would be
virgin-born, in spite of the certainty that such an affirmation would
be met by incredulity and ridicule among Jews, in spite of the -
church’s own interest in maintaining the Davidic descent of Jesus,
and in spite of the obvious danger that among Gentiles the doctrine
would be misunderstood along the lines of pagan mythology. The
arguments for rejecting the historicity of the Virgin Birth seem to
me, as I examine them yet again, not nearly as strong as they are
often assumed to be, and the arguments for accepting it seem to
me weighty. I have to declare myself convinced that I can, without
violating my intellectual integrity, affirm with the Apostles’ Creed,
ex animo, without mental reservations and without shuffling, that
Jesus Christ ‘was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin
Mary’. I also recognize that I have to be willing to undertake again
and again the task of careful consideration of the relevant evidence,

22 Cf. McHugh, op. cit., pp. 290f.

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if fresh possibly relevant material is brought to light or someone

else’s re-examination of the evidence (with a different conclusion)
seems sufficiently thorough and competent to demand it.

V
In conclusion, I must give but the barest hint of what I take to be
the theological significance of the Virgin Birth.

(i) It does not prove the truth of the Incarnation. And we may
not say that God could not have effected the Incarnation
otherwise than in this way. But the way in which, according
to the New Testament and the Creeds, he did effect it is
profoundly eloquent. The Virgin Birth points to the
mystery of the personal union of God and man in Jesus
Christ.
(ii) The statement in the Creed that Jesus Christ ‘was
conceived by the Holy Ghost’ (compare Matt. 1.18, 20;
Luke 1.35) indicates that God himself made a new
beginning in the course of the history of his creation by
coming himself in person and becoming part of that history.
He himself originated this particular human life by a new
act of creation. Jesus Christ is not a saviour arising out of
the continuity of our human history, but God in person
intervening in it, coming to the rescue.
(iii) He was ‘born of .. . Mary’. He is truly human. The Word
really did become flesh, that is, assume our nature, become
true man, while still remaining what he always was.
(iv) The Virginal Conception attests the fact that God’s
redemption of his creation was by grace alone. The sola of
sola gratia is seriously meant and must be seriously
acknowledged. Our humanity, represented by Mary, here
does nothing more than just accept — and even that
acceptance is God’s gracious gift. That is the real
significance of the xeyaQuTWLEVY of Luke 1.28. Our fallen
humanity’s role is here strictly limited. The male sex,
which has been characteristically the dominant, powerful,

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 SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE VIRGIN BIRTH

aggressive element of humanity, is altogether excluded

from this action (and must we not see as included in this
exclusion all dominant, powerful, aggressive manifestations
of female homo sapiens as well?), and our pride and self-
reliant initiative set aside, our humanity’s part is here
simply to be made the receptacle of God’s gift, to be
enabled to submit to be the object of God’s mercy: Ecce
ancilla Domini: fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.

23 On the significance of the Virgin Birth reference should be made to Barth’s

Church Dogmatics 1/2, pp. 172-202 (= Kirchliche Dogmatik 1/2, pp. 187-221);
also Dogmatics in Outline, London, 1949, pp. 95-100 (a magnificent six pages
which deserve and require to be read and re-read with very great attentiveness);
and J. McHugh, op. cit., pp. 330-42.

165
ereaa ei
Wied
 13

A Response to
Professor Richard B. Hays’
The Moral Vision of the
New Testament

The Moral Vision of the New Testament! is undoubtedly a very

important book. It is not surprising that it has been received with
widespread and enthusiastic acclaim. It has many admirable
qualities. Its structure is well thought out and satisfying. It is
clearly and attractively written and will be readily intelligible to
others besides New Testament specialists. The author’s sincerity
is palpable, his Christian commitment obvious, his learning
impressive. The fact that he has wrestled earnestly with some of -
the moral problems which confront the church at the end of the
twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first is every-
where apparent. I for one read his book with unflagging interest
and found it difficult to put down. Professor Hays is to be con-
gratulated on having produced a fine and exhilarating book. He
has put not only New Testament scholars and all who specialize in
Christian ethics but also the church at large in his debt. It is because
the book is so valuable and likely to be very influential that it is, I
think, important to note some of its weaknesses.
Hays says on p. 3: ‘Unless we can give a coherent account of
our methods for moving between text and normative ethical

! The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation: A
Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics, New York, 1996; Edinburgh,
-. 1997.

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On ROMANS

judgments, appeals to the authority of Scripture will be hollow and

unconvincing. It is my aim in this book, therefore, to articulate as
clearly as possible a framework within which we might pursue New
Testament ethics as a normative theological discipline: the goal of
the inquiry will be to clarify how the church can read Scripture
in a faithful and disciplined manner so that Scripture might come
to shape the life of the church.’ The great care with which he has
striven to establish a credible method of moving from the text to
its application to the life of the church is a valuable feature of his
book.
The work consists of four parts. Part I is entitled “The Descrip-
tive Task’, and gives summary accounts of the moral visions of the
major New Testament witnesses. Part II (“The Synthetic Task’) is
concerned with the question whether it is possible to discern
among the diverse voices and apparent tensions a unity of ethical
perspective. Here Hays argues that we have to identify certain key
images which all the canonical writings share. He proposes three:
community, cross, new creation. These, he suggests, ‘can focus
and guide our reading of the New Testament texts with respect to
ethical issues’ (p. 198), serving as ‘/enses that bring our reading of
the canonical texts into sharper focus as we seek to discern what is
central and fundamental in the ethical vision of the New Testament
as a whole’ (p. 200). Part III (“The Hermeneutical Task’) is con-
cerned with the use of the New Testament in Christian ethics. Its
central chapter is a discussion of five representative theologians’
hermeneutical strategies. This is preceded and followed by useful
chapters aimed at the clarification and refinement of hermeneutical
procedures. Part IV (‘The Pragmatic Task’) deals with five test
cases: violence in defence of justice; divorce and remarriage;
homosexuality; anti-Judaism and ethnic conflict; and abortion.
These five issues, the author tells us in his Conclusion, were chosen
for methodological rather than substantive reasons and do not fully
reflect his judgment as to what are the most pressing issues facing
the church today — though, of the four ‘fundamental issues’ listed
on p. 463 as demanding our energy and attention today, two have
in fact been considered as the first and the fourth of the five test
cases, another, ‘the unity of men and women’, has been touched on

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 A RESPONSE TO THE MorRAL VISION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

in connection with the second test case and the remaining one, ‘the
sharing of possessions’, is discussed briefly in the Conclusion.
My first complaint against The Moral Vision of the New
Testament is that, as far as I can see, its author has not attempted a
serious exegesis of those New Testament passages which seem to
indicate that the Christian has an obligation to the civil authority.
The clearest and most emphatic of them is, of course, Romans
13.1-7, every verse of which calls for careful exegesis. But
alongside it must be placed Mark 12.13—17 (= Matt. 22.15-22;
Luke 20.20—26); 1 Timothy 2.1—7; Titus 3.1—2; 1 Peter 2.13-—17.
In addition we should consider the implications of the accounts
of Paul’s use of his Roman citizenship in Acts 16.37—39; 22.25—
29, and of his appeal to Caesar in Acts 25.8—-12. A careful study
of all these passages is enough, I believe, to establish that there
is widespread agreement among the New Testament writers that
the Christian has a duty to the state. (That Revelation stands
apart from the rest of the New Testament in its view of the
Roman empire is obvious. Written most probably towards the
end of the principate of Domitian, who insisted on being
addressed by his officials as ‘our Lord and God’ and whose last
years were something of a ‘Terror’, it is a powerful warning that
the relatively just state can degenerate only too easily into a monster
of injustice.) .
In the circumstances of the Roman empire, an authoritarian
state, the duty owed was limited. I have suggested elsewhere that,
on the basis of the passages which bear on the subject, we may list
the following things as included: showing respect to the emperor
and his representatives (Rom. 13.7; 1 Pet. 2.17); paying taxes (Mark
12.13ff and parallels; Rom. 13.6f); obedience in so far as it does not
conflict with obedience to God (Tit. 3.1); a serious and responsible
disobedience whenever to obey would involve disobeying God;
prayer for the authorities (1 Tim. 2.1ff); and witness to Christ in
their presence (Mark 13.9).?
2 ‘The Christian’s Political Responsibility according to the New Testament’,
in C. E. B. Cranfield, The Bible and Christian Life, Edinburgh, 1985, pp. 48-68.
For an exegesis of Romans 13.1—7 I may refer to my A Critical and Exegetical
_Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans 2, Edinburgh, °1989, pp. 651-73.

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On ROMANS

If I am right in thinking that there is no reason to believe that

a democratic form of state is less acceptable to God than an
autocratic, then surely those Christians who live in democracies
must try to work out what in their situation is the equivalent to
the being subject to the governing authorities, which St Paul
enjoins in Romans 13.1, 5. I take it that the basic idea expressed
by the Greek verb b10td&oo0E00aL with the dative in Romans 13.1
is ‘to allow the claim someone has on one to take priority over
the claim one has on oneself’. The Christian who lives in a
democracy then, if he would be obedient to the New Testament
teaching, must put the true well-being of the state of which he
is a citizen before his own interests, in the knowledge that its
existence is a part of God’s merciful provision for the good of
human beings. He will recognize that his democratic state needs
much more from him than the Roman empire needed from its
inhabitants and that he can — and therefore surely must — do
much more towards the maintenance of the state as a just state
than was ever possible for them. He will recognize that, in addition
to fulfilling those obligations to the state which are actually
specified in the New Testament, he must also try conscien-
tiously to do to the best of his ability those extra things which a
democratic state needs from its citizens, if it is to function
properly as a democratic state. These include at any rate respon-
sible participation in elections both national and local; a serious
and sustained endeavour to keep oneself as fully and reliably
informed as possible about political issues, since responsible voting
is possible only on the basis of adequate knowledge; criticism of
the government, its policies and its implementation of them, in
the light of the gospel and law of God; and an unceasing endeavour
to support just and humane policies and to oppose those policies
and particular decisions which are unjust or inhumane by the
various means which are constitutionally open to one. Must we
not accept that for us to fail to try seriously to render these services
to the state to which we belong would be to refuse to be subject to
the authority (Avtitdooeo8a tH EEovodig) and so to oppose
God’s ordering and bring upon ourselves God’s judgment (Rom.
13-2)?

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To omit to address the issue of the Christian’s political

responsibility in a book on the ethical vision of the New Testament
seems to me a very serious omission.
My second criticism is more tentative. I cannot help wondering
whether Professor Hays’ three ‘images’ (community, cross, new
creation) are enough. Two other ‘images’ seem to me to have a
strong claim to be considered. The first of them is ‘creation’. Is not
the fact that the God revealed in Jesus is the Creator a matter of
very great importance for the New Testament writers? Is not faith
in God as Creator and also the Sustainer and Ruler of his creation
the context in which Professor Hays’ three images function? Its
bearing on ethics may be seen in Romans 1.18—32 but also in such
passages as Matthew 6.25—34; 10.29f; 1 Peter 4.19. Does not
Professor Hays’ omission of creation from his list of ‘images’ have
the effect of obscuring the fact that God elected a community not
just for its own sake but for the sake of his whole creation, because
he was and is and always will be the ‘faithful Creator’ (1 Pet. 4.19),
faithful to all that he has created? Was not John Calvin being true
to the New Testament, when in discussing the words ‘Our Father’
in the Lord’s Prayer he insisted that the Christian should in his
prayers ‘embrace all who are his brothers in Christ, not only those
whom he at present sees and recognizes as such but all men [=
homines, i.e. human beings] who dwell on earth’?
The second possible extra ‘image’ is ‘Jesus is Lord’ or ‘Christ
exalted’. Romans 10.9; 1 Corinthians 12.3; 2 Corinthians 4.5;
Philippians 2.11 are evidence for the early use of ‘Jesus is Lord’
(xUeELOS Inoots) as a confessional formula in the church, and this,
together with the number of times that Psalm 110.1 is quoted or
echoed in the New Testament, suggests that the focal point of the
early church’s faith was the present reign of the exalted Christ.
(When Paul says that he preaches ‘Christ crucified’ (1 Cor. 1.23;
2.2), he most certainly wants to emphasize the never-ending
importance of the cross; but he does not mean that he preaches
Christ crucified as though he were still on the cross. The cross is

3 Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated by F. L. Battles, London, 1961,

2, p- 901.

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On ROMANS

significant because it was not the end. At the same time Christ’s
lordship is only truly understood in the light of the cross. The
object of the preaching is the exalted crucified one.) We may
compare Matthew 28.18; John 17.2; Ephesians 1.20—23; 1 Peter
3.22; Revelation 1.5; 17.14; 19.16. If I am right in my under-
standing of the affirmation that Jesus is Lord (that it was ascribing
to the exalted Jesus the authority and lordship of God himself),
then it has an important bearing on the way we think about our
political responsibility, since it means that political affairs no less
than the life of the church are within the dominion of Christ. When
the Christian moves beyond the church’s boundaries, he is not
passing into the dominion of some other lord, but merely from that
sphere in which Christ’s lordship is more or less adequately known
and more or less sincerely acknowledged into a sphere in which,
though, it is not yet known and acknowledged, it is no less real and
inescapable.
A third criticism concerns the way in which appeal is made to
the example of Jesus. That he is indeed, according to the New
Testament, the great example for Christians is certainly not
disputed. My worry is that Professor Hays does not seem to take
sufficient account of the differences between the situation of Jesus
and our situation. Two very significant differences ought surely to
be allowed for.
The first is that the New Testament represents Jesus as con-
scious of having been sent by God expressly ‘to give his life a
ransom for many’. Death at the hands of men, but by God’s
appointment, and as the means of delivering human beings, was
something he accepted as a necessary part of his mission (e.g. Mark
8.31; 9.31; 10.33-34, 45; 12.6—-7, 12; 14.22—24, 35-36; cf. Rom.
5.8, Gal. 2.20; Phil. 2.8). This is not our situation. Our part is to
bear witness to Christ bravely (which may indeed be exceedingly
costly), not to be co-redeemers.
The second significant difference is that, whether in Galilee
which was governed by the tetrarch Herod Antipas, a puppet ruler
dependent on Rome, or in Judaea, which had been under direct
Roman rule since AD 6, Jesus lived and fulfilled his ministry under
an autocratic government and was quite without political power,

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whereas nationals of the United States of America at the turn of

the twentieth century are the privileged citizens of a state, which is
not only the richest, most powerful, most influential state on earth,
but also a democracy. For them it is possible to exercise very
considerable political power either in support of justice and
humaneness and in opposition to injustice, inhumanity and oppres-
sion, or else — whether by actions or by inaction — to strengthen
injustice, inhumanity and oppression, and to frustrate justice and
humaneness, not only in their own country but also in many other
countries over which their government and their great companies
exert great influence. What is true of Christians in the United
States is also true, though in a much smaller way, of Christians in
Britain and other democracies. While Jesus lived his life ‘outside
the circle of power’,* Christians in the United States and in Britain
are quite clearly within that circle. In view of this enormous
difference between Jesus’ situation and ours, it is surely of the
greatest importance for us to recognize that there is a real danger
that by trying in a wooden way to follow his example we may
actually fail to be obedient to him.
I turn now to Professor Hays’ discussion of the first of his ‘test
cases’ (‘Violence in Defence of Justice’). That war is a terrible,
hideous evil, there is absolutely no doubt. To take part in killing
one’s fellow human beings, whatever the circumstances, is a ~
terrible, hideous thing. The question whether in obedience to
Christ the Christian must in all circumstances refuse to take part
in it or whether there may be some circumstances in which to
refuse to take part in it would be an even greater evil than to fight
and kill, is a serious question which has caused many of us much
anguish. The answer of the New Testament is not, I think, as clear
as Professor Hays would have us believe (he has no doubt that it
supports the pacifist position). In any case, we need to be aware of
the danger of allowing ourselves to be so preoccupied with trying
to decide once for all the question at issue between pacifist and
non-pacifist Christians that we fail altogether to give serious
attention to the causes of wars. There is surely an urgent need to

+ The phrase is used by Hays, p. 325.

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consider in the light of the New Testament such things as long-

standing injustices between and within nations, rivalry between
ideologies, competition for natural resources and for markets, the
frightening power of multinational corporations, the unchecked
movement of capital, the pressures exerted by shareholders for
ever-increasing dividends, the crippling burdens of third world
debt, the pressures of population growth, the insatiable consump-
tion of limited global natural resources by the richest countries,
the desperate poverty and hunger of millions, the greed of indi-
viduals for power and dominance, and the part played by fear.
If we are unconvinced by the pacifist’s contention that the New
Testament simply forbids us to take part in, or support, the use of
force in any circumstances, we may well decide that the United
Nations, for all its faults and failures, represents the best
opportunity in our generation for promoting peace and is some-
thing which Christians ought to welcome as a gift of God’s mercy
and try their best to support. That it has often proved weak and
ineffective is true; but it is not the project itself that has been shown
to be defective, but the will of the various national governments to
fulfil their obligations to it. As a forum in which poor and weak
countries have a voice as well as the rich and strong, the United
Nations General Assembly deserves the respectful attention of
Christians. If we are serious in our desire to heed the moral
vision of the New Testament, we shall, I believe, do our utmost to
persuade our governments to try to make the United Nations more
effective, loyally to fulfil their financial and other obligations to it,
and to stop seeking to manipulate it for the promotion of their own
interests; and we shall surely pray earnestly for God’s blessing
upon it.
I conclude by making just one more point. With regard to
Professor Hays’ fourth test case (‘Anti-Judaism and Ethnic
Conflict’), while I fully share his sense of deep shame at the
cruelties inflicted by Christians on Jews in the past, his abhorrence
of all anti-Judaism? and of all other racial prejudice, and also his

* Though, in this connection, I would want to question whether on pp. 422-8

and 432-4 Hays is fair to Matthew and John.

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A RESPONSE TO THE Mora VISION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

eagerness for brotherly dialogue between Christians and Jews,

there is one aspect of his discussion that troubles me. It seems to
me that there is something wrong in writing about relations
between Christians and Jews at the present time without referring
to the problem of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people.
Christians are liable to let their proper sense of shame about the
sufferings of Jews at the hands of the Nazis render them uncritical
of the state of Israel. But we cannot make amends at the Palestinian
people’s cost for our churches’ and our countries’ failures to do
what could have been done to save Jews in the 1930s and early
1940s. A recent letter from the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians
(dated 1 April 1997) speaks of the ‘up to 500,000 Palestinian
refugees confined to just 22 refugee camps [in Lebanon]’, and says
that, though a great many of them ‘have existed as refugees since
1948, there still remains no prospect of Israel allowing them to
exercise the right of returning to their homes in cities such as Haifa
and Jaffa’. It goes on to describe conditions: ‘Many of the camps
do not have even basic amenities. There is chronic overcrowding,
open drainage of sewage, limited water supplies, malnutrition, and
little or no access to basic health care.’ But what is happening in
the refugee camps in Lebanon is only one bit of the wrong that is
being done to the Palestinian people. We read in our newspapers
of Mr Netanyahu’s cavalier treatment of the Oslo Agreement and
his insistence on continuing to build more and more Jewish
settlements in a cynical attempt to frustrate the peace agreement
by more and more concrete ‘facts on the ground’. For Christians to
be blind to the wrongs which are being perpetrated against the
Palestinians every day by Israel is not the right way to seek
reconciliation between Christians and Jews. For us to fail now to
speak out clearly and persistently against what Israel is doing would
be a grievous betrayal of those Jews both outside and within Israel
who have courageously opposed the Is~aeli government’s actions
and also, I believe, the cruellest injury which we could possibly
inflict on the Jewish people as a whole.

175
 List of the Author’s
Publications Excluding Reviews
(those republished in The Bible and Christian Life, 1985, are marked by an asterisk, those
republished in the present volume by two asterisks)

1941
‘Look before you leap’, in Community (1940-41), pp. 44—5.
““’.. but ... therefore ...” or signposts in the Epistle to the
Romans’, in The Student Movement 44 (1941-42), pp. 22-3.

1942
“The Church and Belshazzar: a study in the fifth chapter of Daniel’,
in The Student Movement 44 (1941-42), pp. 107-8.
‘Grace: a meditation upon Psalm 90’, in The Student Movement 45
(1942-43), pp. 13-14.

1943
* ‘An interpretation of the Book of Job’, in The Expository Times 54
(1942-43), pp. 295-8.

1944
“The burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see’, in The Student
Movement 46 (1943-44), pp. 119-20.

» 1945
‘The Vision of the Divine Warrior (Isa. 63.16)’, in The Student
Movement 47 (1944-45), pp. 67-8.

i
On ROMANS

1948
‘The cup metaphor in Mark 14.36 and parallels’, in The Expository
Times 59 (1947-48), pp. 137-8.

1949
‘The love of God’, in The Student Movement 51 (1948-49), no. 3,
pp. 6-9.

1950
The First Epistle of Peter, London, 1950; 4th impression, 1958.
‘St Mark 9.14—29’, in Scottish Journal of Theology 3 (1950), pp. 57—
67.
‘Fellowship’, ‘Love’, etc. in A. Richardson (ed.), A Theological
Word Book of the Bible, London, 1950.

1951
‘Riches and the kingdom of God: Mark 10.17—31’, in Scottish
Journal of Theology 4 (1951), pp. 302-13.
‘St Mark 4.1—34: Part I, in Scottish Journal of Theology 4 (1951),
pp. 398-414.

1952
‘St Mark 4.1—34: Part ID’, in Scottish Journal of Theology 5 (1952),
pp. 49-66.
“The first recorded Christian service? (Luke 24.13—35)’, in The
Student Movement 54 (1951-52), no. 4, pp. 11-13.
‘A pastor’s thanksgiving and intercession for a local church (Phil.
1.3-11), in The Student Movement 54 (1951-52), no. 5, pp. 10-13.
‘St Mark 16.1—8: Part P and ‘St Mark 16.1—8: Part II’, in Scottish
Journal of Theology 5 (1952), pp. 282-98 and 398-414.

1953
‘St Mark 13’, in Scottish Journal of Theology 6 (1953), pp. 189-96
and 287-303.

178
 LIST OF THE AUTHOR’S PUBLICATIONS

1954
‘St Mark 13’ (continued), in Scottish Journal of Theology 7 (1954),
pp. 284-303.
“The Good Samaritan (Luke 10.25—37)’, in Theology Today 11
(1954), pp. 368-72; reprinted, with slight alterations, in The Service
of God (see under 1965) and in If God befor us, 1985.
‘Romans 7 reconsidered’, in The Expository Times 65 (1953-54), p
PONE

1955
‘Message of hope: Mark 4.21-32’, in Interpretation 9 (1955), pp.
150-64.
“The baptism of our Lord —a study of St Mark 1.9-11’, in Scottish
Journal of Theology 8 (1955), pp. 53-63.
‘St John’ and ‘1 Peter’, in G. H. Davies and A. Richardson (ed.),
The Teachers’ Commentary, revised ed., London, 1955, pp. 439-50
and 504-10.
‘St Matthew 25.3146’, in The Presbyterian Messenger 110 teen)
no. 1252, pp. 2-3.

1956
“The witness of the New Testament to Christ’, in T. H. L. Parker
(ed.), Essays in Christology
for Karl Barth (London, 1956), pp. 71—
91.
‘Jesus Christ is Lord’, in The Presbyterian Messenger 111 (1956),
no. 1265, pp. 2-3.

1957
The Epistle ofJames: four studies (a brief study outline published by
the Student Christian Movement), London, 1957.

1958
* ‘The interpretation of 1 Peter 3.19 and 4.6’, in The Expository
Times 69 (1957-58), pp. 369-72.

179
On ROMANS

* Divine and human action: the biblical concept of worship’, in

Interpretation 12 (1958), pp. 387-98; reprinted, with slight altera-
tions and an additional note, in The Service of God (see under 1965).

1959
The Gospel according to Saint Mark (Cambridge Greek Testament
Commentary), Cambridge, 1959. Reprinted with supplementary
notes, 1963; with additional supplementary notes, 1966; with
further revision in subsequent impressions; 11th impression 1994.

1960
‘Some observations on Romans 13.1—7’, in New Testament Studies
6 (1959-60), pp. 241-9.
I and II Peter and Jude (Torch Bible Commentaries), London,
1960.

1961
‘Diakonia (Matthew 25.31—46’, in The London Quarterly and
Holborn Review 186 (1961), pp. 275-81; reprinted in The Service of
God (see under 1965) and in If God befor us, 1985.

1962
* ‘The Christian’s political responsibility according to the New
Testament’, in Scottish Journal of Theology 15 (1962), pp. 176-92;
reprinted in The Service of God (see under 1965). A Spanish
translation was published in C. E. B. Cranfield and A. Skevington
Wood. Responsabilidad Social y politica, Buenos Aires, 1972. The
article was republished in Metanoia 3 (1993), pp. 16-28, and in
Reformed Review 50 (1996), pp. 5-18.
* METOEOV MLOTEWS in Romans 12.3’, in New Testament Studies 8
(1961-62), pp. 345-51.
Commentary on 1 Peter and general article on the Catholic
Epistles, in M. Black and H. H. Rowley (ed.), Peake’s Commentary
on the Bible, 1962.

180
 LIST OF THE AUTHOR’S PUBLICATIONS

‘Mark, Gospel of’ in G. A. Buttrick (ed.), The Interpreter’s

Dictionary of the Bible. New York and Nashville, 1962, vol. 3, pp.
267-77.
Brief articles in B. Reicke and L. Rost (ed.), Biblisch-Historisches
Handworterbuch 1, Gottingen, 1962.

1963
A Ransom for Many, London. 1963; reprinted in Jf God be for us,
1985.
‘The Parable of the Unjust Judge and the eschatology of Luke—
Acts’, in Scottish Journal of Theology 16 (1963), pp. 297-301.

1964
‘St Paul and the law’, in Scottish Journal of Theology 17 (1964),
pp. 43-68; reprinted in R. Batey (ed.), New Testament Issues, New
York and Evanston, 1970.
‘The Gospel in action: St Luke 14.12—14’, in R. J. W. Bevan
(ed.), The Christian Way Explained: sermons on belief and behaviour
by the Archbishop of York: and other preachers. London, 1964,
pp. 49-56; reprinted in [f God befor us, 1985.
* ‘The significance of 6ua mavtoc in Romans 11.10’, in F. L.
Cross (ed.), Studia Evangelica Ul, part 1, Berlin, 1964, pp. 546—
50.
Brief articles in B. Reicke and L. Rost (ed.), Biblisch-Historisches
Handworterbuch 2, Gottingen, 1964.

1965
A Commentary on Romans 12-13 (Scottish Journal of Theology,
Occasional Papers 12), Edinburgh, 1965.
The Service of God, London, 1965.
‘Minister and congregation in the light of 2 Corinthians 4.5—7: an
exposition’, in Jnterpretation 19 (1965), pp. 163—7.
* ‘The message of James’, in Scottish Journal of Theology 18 (1965),
_ pp. 182-93 and 338-45.

181
On ROMANS

1966
‘Romans 8.28’, in Scottish Journal of Theology 19 (1966), pp. 204—
15.
* Diakonia in the New Testament’, in J. 1.McCord and T. H. L.
Parker (ed.), Service in Christ: essays presented to Karl Barth on his
80th birthday, London, 1966, pp. 37-48.
Brief articles in B. Reicke and L. Rost (ed.), Biblisch-Historiches
Handworterbuch 3, Gottingen, 1966.

1967
* ‘New church constitutions and diakonia’, in Scottish Journal of
Theology 20 (1967), pp. 338-41.
* ‘Hebrews 13.20-1’, in Scottish Journal of Theology 20 (1967), pp.
437-41.
‘What is the Gospel?’, in Outlook (official magazine of the
Presbyterian Church of England) 1 (1967), no. 4, p. 10.

1968
‘Romans 1.18’, in Scottish Journal of Theology 21 (1968), pp.
330-5.
‘Are annotated Bibles desirable?’, in The Churchman 82 (1968), pp.
290-6.
1969
‘A reply to Mr. Bradnock’, in The Churchman 83 (1969), pp. 28—
30. Postscript on section headings for Bibles’, in The Churchman
83 (1969), pp. 203-5.
‘On some of the problems in the interpretation of Romans 5.12’, in
Scottish Journal of Theology 22 (1969), pp. 32441.
“True religion: a sermon on Micah 6.8’, in Communio Viatorum 12
(1969), pp. 191-5; reprinted in If God befor us, 1985.

eyie
‘“You” or “Thou”’ (letter to the editor), in Outlook 6 (1972), no.
54, p. 18.
‘You and Thou’ (letter to the editor), in Outlook 6 (1972), no. 56,
p. 23;

182
 LIST OF THE AUTHOR’S PUBLICATIONS

1974
* ‘Some observations on Romans 8.19-21’, in R. Banks (ed.),
Reconciliation and Hope: New Testament essays on atonement and
eschatology presented to L. L. Morris on his 60th birthday, Exeter,
1974, pp. 224-30.
“The freedom of the Christian according to Romans 8.2’, in M. E.
Glasswell and E. W. Fasholé-Luke (ed.), New Testament
Christianity for Africa and the World: essays in honour of Harry
Sawyerr, London, 1974, pp. 91-8.
‘Some observations on the interpretation of Romans 14.1—15.13’,
in Communio Viatorum 17 (1974), pp. 193-204.

1975
* “The preacher and his authority’, in Epworth Review 2 (1975),
pp. 95-106.
‘Some notes on Romans 9.30—33’, in E. E. Ellis and E. Grasser
(ed.), Jesus und Paulus: Festschrift fiir Werner Georg Kitimmel zum
70. Geburtstag, Gottingen, 1975, pp 35-43.
A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans |
(The International Critical Commentary), Edinburgh, 1975; with
numerous corrections in subsequent impressions; 9th impression
1998. A Korean translation of this together with volume 2 was:
published, Seoul, 1994; a Chinese translation of this volume was
published, Taipei, 1997.

1978
‘A comment on Mark 10.1—12 on marriage and the remarriage of
divorced people’, in a collection of papers, Marriage, Divorce and
Remarriage, United Reformed Church, 1978.

1979
A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans 2,
Edinburgh, 1979; with numerous corrections in subsequent
impressions; 6th impression 1994.
* “A study of 1 Thessalonians 2’, in Irish Biblical Studies | (1979),
- pp. 215-26.

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On ROMANS

1980
‘Romans 9.30-10.4’, in Interpretation 34 (1980), pp. 70-4.

1981
Sermon on Matthew 11.28—30, in Kingsmen 35 (Spring term 1981),
pp. 25-9; reprinted in [f God be for us, 1985.

1982
* ‘Tight from St Paul on Christian-Jewish relations’, in D. W.
Torrance (ed.), The Witness of the Jews to God, Edinburgh, 1982,
pp. 23-31.
‘John 1.14: “became”’, in The Expository Times 93 (1981-82),
p 215;
* ‘Changes of person and number in Paul’s Epistles’, in M. D.
Hooker and S. G. Wilson (ed.), Paul and Paulinism: essays in honour
of C. K. Barrett, London, 1982, pp. 280-9.
* “Thoughts on New Testament eschatology’, in Scottish Journal
of Theology 35 (1982), pp. 497-512.

1983
‘Some questions evoked by Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry’, in
Focus on Unity (the newsletter of the Ecumenical Response Group
in the United Reformed Church), no. 3 (1983), pp. 6-7.

1985
Romans: a shorter commentary, Edinburgh and Grand Rapids, 1985;
5th impression 1995. A Portuguese translation was published, Sao
Paulo, 1992; a Spanish translation, Buenos Aires and Grand
Rapids, 1993; and a Korean translation, Seoul, 1997.
If God be for us: a collection of sermons, Edinburgh, 1985.
The Bible and Christian Life: a collection of essays, Edinburgh,
1985.

1986
‘The interpretation of Romans 9-11’, in A. P. F. Sell (ed.),
Reformed Theology and the Jewish People, Geneva, 1986, pp. 55-63.

184
 LIST OF THE AUTHOR’S PUBLICATIONS

1987
** ‘Some comments on Professor J. D. G. Dunn’s Christology in
the Making, with special reference to the evidence of the Epistle
to the Romans’, in L. D. Hurst and N. T. Wright (ed.), The Glory
of Christ in the New Testament: studies in Christology in memory of
G. B. Caird, Oxford, 1987, pp. 267-80.
** ‘Preaching on Romans’, in The Expository Times 99 (1987-88),
pp. 36-40.

1988
** “Some reflections on the subject of the Virgin Birth’, in Scottish
Journal of Theology 41 (1988), pp. 177-89.

1989
“The Prophet Oded: sermon on 2 Chronicles 28.1—15’, in The
Expository Times 100 (1988-89) , pp. 383-4.
“The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: 2 Corinthians 8.1—9’, in
Communio Viatorum 32 (1989), pp. 105-9.

1990
** “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ’, in The Expository Times 101 —
(1989-90), pp. 167-72.
‘God’s Costly Forgiveness: sermon on Isaiah 53.6c’, in The
Expository Times 101 (1989-90), pp. 178-80.
** ‘Giving a dog a bad name: a note on H. Raisanen’s Paul and the
Lam, in Journal for the Study of the New Testament 38 (1990), pp.
77-85.
‘One Dissenter’s thoughts on the Book of Common Prayer’, in
M. Johnson (ed.), Thomas Cranmer: essays in commemoration of the
500th anniversary of his birth, Durham, 1990, pp. 229-39.

1991
‘Guidance for Christians facing war’ (letter to the editor), in
_ Reform, January 1991, p. 31.

185
On ROMANS

‘A goodly heritage’, in Metanoia | (1991), pp. 23-8.

** “The works of the law” in the Epistle to the Romans’, in
Journal for the Study of the New Testament 43 (1991), pp. 89—
101.

1992
‘The effects of idolized market forces’ (letter to the editor), in
Metanoia 2 (1992), pp. 91-3.
‘Dying with Christ and being raised with Christ (Colossians 3.1—
15), in Metanoia 2 (1992), pp. 99-102.

1993
‘Self-denial: sermon on Matthew 16.24’, in The Expository Times
104 (1992-93), pp. 143-5.
** ‘Has the Old Testament law a place in the Christian life? A
response to Professor Westerholm’, in /rish Biblical Studies 15
(1993), pp. 50-64.
‘Some human relationships: sermon on Colossians 3.18—4.1’, in
The Expository Times 104 (1992-93), pp. 305-7.
“The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant: sermon on Matthew
18.23—35°, in The Expository Times 104 (1992-93), pp. 339-41.
The Apostles’ Creed: a faith to live by, Grand Rapids and Edinburgh,
1993. A Japanese translation was published, Tokyo, 1995.

1994
‘World Council of Churches too anxious not to offend the Serbs?’
(letter to the editor), in Reform, April 1994, p. 24.
“With all thy mind: sermon on Mark 12.30’, in The Expository Times
105 (1993-94), pp. 306-7.
** “Who are Christ’s brothers (Matthew 25.40)?’, in Metanoia 4
(1994), pp. 31-9.
** ‘Romans 6.1—14 revisited’, in The Expository Times 106 (1994—
95), pp. 40-3.

186
 LIST OF THE AUTHOR’S PUBLICATIONS

1995
** ‘Paul’s teaching on sanctification, with special reference to the
Epistle to the Romans’, in Reformed Review 48 (1994-95), pp. 217—
29. Reprinted in Metanoia 5 (1995), pp. 194-208.

1996
‘With confidence to the throne of grace: sermon on Hebrews 4.14—
16’, in The Expository Times 107 (1995-96), pp. 113-15.

187
 Index of
Chief Passages Discussed

Isaiah 3.2126 7325 10.12—14 61

7.14 155-6 222 85-7 11.6 11-12
3.25 88-90 13.1-7 77-8, 169-70
Matthew 3.26 90 13.8-10 111-12
jie Maa1 154-5 328 8-9 14.1-15.13 78-9
Pe \lN2 152 4.2 9 16.1—27 79-80
Dlo=23 159 4.6 9-10
My Si 131-4 4.16 91
1 Corinthians
25.40, 45 125-35 5.20-21 15-22
Ts ~ 119-20
6.1223 75
9.20 114-15
Mark 6.1-14 B33
15 143-4
6.3 153 6.14 113-14
15.5-8 148-9 ©
7.6 121-2
Luke Lt2 118
Males 157-8 714-25) 36-8, 104, 2 Corinthians
P20 7 105—6, 118 3.16 112
323-28 154-5 8.1-16 76
8.2 33-49
Galatians
Romans 8.3 56-7
2.16 3, 91—2
11—7 70 8.4 111
2.17=19 115-16
1.3-4 54-6 8.9-11 57-8
2.20 92-3
1.8-16 70-1 8.1730 46-7
3.19-4.5 116
PY8=32 gi! 8.17-39 76
B22 93-4
1.18—3.20 100-2 9.1-11.36 76
5.14 112
21—3.20 72-3 9.5 58-9
2.14-15, 26-27 102—4 9.11-12 10
Dey, 121-2 9.32 11 Philippians
3.20 5—8 10.6-10 59-60 3.9 94-5

189
< weet eae -
_ He

athativts:3

Pa
os 1.

wondyy ice
T
 Index of Names

Aland, K. 2, 82 Lochman,J.M. 123, 153

Longenecker, B.W. 81
Barrett, C.K. 15, 143, 150, 154 En7Zwe53: 162
Barth, K. 54, 141, 159-60,
165 McHugh, J. 153, 15551569158:
Bauer, W. 61 160, 163, 165
Metzger, B.M. 58-9
Calvin,J. 44, 171 Moule, C.F.D. 27
Chadwick, H. 160, 162
Neill,S. 143
Dunn, J.D. G. 1-13, 20, 51-68,
Preiss) 130
82, 84, 87, 95, 96
Raisanen, H. 99-107
Fitzmyer,J.A. 82
Sanday, W. 15
Gray, S.W. 125, 127-9 Sanders, E. P. 1
Schlier, H. 5 9
Hanson, A. T. 82 Stanton, G.N. 127-32
Hays, R. B. 81,87, 167-75 Stauffer, E. 154, 157-9
Headlam, A>. 15
Hofius, O. 16-18 Wallis, I. G. 81, 84-95
Hooker, M.D. 81, 82, 87 Wedderburn, A.J.M. 99
Hultgren, A.J. 84 Westerholm, S. 109-24
Whitehouse, W. A. 141, 160
. Johnson, L. T. 81 Wilckens, U. 58
Williams, S.K. 81
Kasemann, E. 58 Winandy, J. 128
Kuss, O. 58 Wright, N. T. 118, 143

191
 DATE DUE
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Demco, Inc. 38-293

CINCINNAT! BIBLE COLLEGE & SEM. LIBRARY
 On Romans
and Other New Testament Essays

C.E.B. CRANFIELD —
C.E:B. Cranfield takes a fresh look at questions about which there
is currently much lively debate: what Paul meant by the works
of.the law’, whether Paul meant pistis Christou to be understood as
‘faith in Christ’ or ‘Christ's faith’, whether the Old Testament law
has a continuing place in the life of the Christian church In
‘Sanctification as Freedom’, he attempts to. draw out the
significance of the apostle’s affirmation that the law of the Spit
has freed the believer from the law of sin and of death
A mark of these and other essays, several of which have not been
published before, is that Charles Cranfield never loses sight of
the relevance of theology and of New Testament studies to the
life of the church and the Christian in today’s world.
C.E.B.CRANFIELD. is Emeritus Professor of Theology, University
of Durham. Se

‘This is one of the finest volumes of collected essays that I have

ever had the privilege of reviewing.’
Stanley E.Porter, Journal for the Study of the New Testament
.. a model of clarity.’
Gerald R: Winslow, Seminary Studies
‘There is a feeling of passionate cut and thrust in all these New
-elestament debates to which Professor Cranfield contributes
Geoffrey Harris, Epworth Review ;

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